While in the background, on the diplomatic front, they continue to work on a personal meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Kiev remains indebted to the gesture policy towards the Transcarpathian Hungarians. He would have had the opportunity to do so, and even now it is not too late.

The language use problems objected to by the local Hungarians and the leadership in the motherland behind it could have been settled in a reassuring way by elevating the Hungarians to the indigenous peoples, but this did not happen. The new legislation on minority or national communities could be a solution, but based on the details known so far, we cannot expect substantial progress from that either. From the point of view of minorities in Ukraine, the norm control of the robed body also ended with a decision that was unfavorable. Last week, the Ukrainian Constitutional Court declared the legislation on the operation of the state language, better known as the language law, as constitutional, which practically makes it impossible to use minority languages ​​in all important areas of life, from education to commerce to cultural life, including the press, reports Magyar Nemzet...

...Aware of the negative developments, the Subcarpathian Hungarian Cultural Association (KMKSZ) considers it regrettable that the language law was deemed constitutional. They are convinced that a political and not a legal decision was made. They recalled that Hungarian organizations in Transcarpathia, among others, strongly protested against the legislation adopted in April 2019, as the law abolishes all linguistic rights of minorities. This law not only makes it impossible for the languages ​​of national and linguistic minorities to be used in the community, but also foresees punishment for violators of these rules , thereby contradicting many international commitments, their statement states.

At the same time, the cultural association welcomes the initiative of the President of Ukraine, which would regulate the situation of the national communities living in the country in a new law. The 1992 Act on National Minorities, which is still in force, provides relatively broad rights to the nationalities living in the country in accordance with European practice. At KMKSZ, they are confident that the new regulations would further expand and not narrow the already existing minority rights.

Hope dies last, the saying goes, so while we live, we hope. But what can we hope for when the Ukrainian legislature refuses to acknowledge a single obvious fact. Namely, that the Hungarians living there are not settlers, they and their ancestors lived there too. So why aren't Hungarians a native minority?

The question is also that if the law on national minorities, which is still valid today, "ensures relatively broad rights", how can the language law take away one of the most important elements of these, the right to the official use of the mother tongue?

Ukraine would very much like to become a member of the European Union and, of course, would also like to join NATO. Like that? This is not going to work guys…

The full article can be read here.

(Header image source: Sputnik/Stringer)