Europe's attention must be drawn to the fact that nations and nationalities cannot be separated from each other, said the State Secretary of the Prime Minister's Office responsible for church and nationalities relations at the presentation of the Békés county nationalities awards on Tuesday in Méhkerék.
Miklós Soltész called the Brussels decision incomprehensible and unacceptable, which granted Croatia, but denied Romania and Bulgaria, the opportunity to join the Schengen area. These countries are "considered as second-rate nations, and the people living there as second-rate citizens in Brussels," he said.
Meanwhile, here in Hungary, nationalities live side by side in peace, preserve their culture and identity, and celebrate each other together. The Hungarian government will support this, just as investments - the renovation of churches and educational institutions, the organization of community programs - have been and will continue to be.
This is not easy when there is "unrest in the world", which is because many people did not understand: peoples and nationalities are dependent on each other.
Miklós Soltész said that in Békés County alone, these identity strengthening programs and developments were supported in the last 10-12 years in an amount exceeding HUF five billion. The goal and the task is that all this can continue, because good relations with the nationalities living in Hungary and attention to them have a positive effect on the relations between the countries.
The Békés county nationalities presented the Békés county nationalities awards at a daily ceremony.
According to the awards, the 2022 awardee of the Slovak nationality was Mária Edit Csasztvanné Vass, a teacher, folk singer and choir leader , who has been teaching at the Slovak Primary School in Szarvas for more than four decades, and is also a member of the Tessedik Dance Ensemble and the Slovak Folk Choir in Szarvas.
Mihály Körösi , who was a teacher and school director until his retirement, was also a nature and environmentalist and local historian. As a member of the International Association of Gulág and Gupvi Researchers, he received the Hungarian Cross of Merit for his work.
Anca Bekán, one of the important journalists of the Romanian nationality , who works in her free time to preserve the national costumes of the Romanian nationality community, was awarded the Romanian nationality award. Thanks to his dedication, Romanian kindergarteners and schoolchildren from Gyula and Méhkerek now appear in the celebrations in the clothes he sewed and embroidered.
Teacher János Papp, doctor of earth sciences, head of public education was awarded the honor of the Roma nationality . As a pedagogical expert of the National Roma Self-Government, he participated in several European Union programs helping to catch up. He is credited with the creation of the Lovár (Gypsy) language book, dictionary and collection of exam papers. In 2013, as an expert of the Office of Education, he was asked to check the language examination in Lovár and to edit exam tasks. This was later followed by the development of the so-called EZRA Language Examination System and the creation of the examination center.
Source: MTI
Photo: MTI/Tibor Rosta
