A delegation from the Hungarian Community Association met with Education Ministry State Secretary, Mónika Filip, on April 1st. Just two weeks into the job, the ethnic Hungarian official’s portfolio includes education in minority languages. Ms. Filip told Felvidek.ma on April 5 that one of her first steps was to make the ministry’s website available in the Hungarian, Ruthenian and Roma languages. Emphasizing the actual implementation of reforms, the State Secretary mentioned shoring up minority teachers, quality and quantity of textbooks in minority languages, and strengthening instruction of Slovak as a second language for minority students.… Read More

If you live in the United States, you will be counted during the 2020 census. It is important that under the question about your race, you not only check the appropriate box but write in “HUNGARIAN” so that the Hungarian-American community can be officially counted.… Read More

For the first time since Slovakia gained independence, Hungarians, the country’s largest national minority, will not have any parliamentary representation. Neither of the two ethnic Hungarian coalitions met the five percent threshold in the parliamentary elections on Sunday, February 29. … Read More

Hundreds of millions of euros worth of state tax revenue has been lost, and promises to be lost, to southern Slovakia, including Hungarian-inhabited settlements, due to the disproportionate funding of local governments, said Péter Őry chairman of the Hungarian Community Party at a news conference on January 28. The disadvantage stems from the distribution mechanism used to return the share of taxes on natural persons to municipalities. … Read More

For the fourth year running, the Hungarian Community Party (MKP)  filed another complaint to the regulatory body of the Slovak Public Media Service and the State Prosecutor for failing to uphold the law that proscribes proportionate hours of minority language programming on public television.… Read More

The Hungarian community in Slovakia needs to succeed in the February 29 parliamentary elections and again have representation in the legislature, said the leader of Hungarian Community Association (MKÖ), Gyula Bárdos. … Read More

On January 16, the Ukrainian Parliament adopted a law regulating secondary education, which also applies to the Hungarian minority. “Ukrainian authorities lack the political will to comprehend that they have taken away crucial minority rights and, for Hungarians in Subcarpathia, the 150-year-old right to education in their mother tongue,” said Ildikó Orosz, President of the Hungarian Teachers’ Association of Subcarpathia (KMPSZ) following a meeting with the Ukrainian Education Minister. The vote was 327 Yeas, 3 Nays, 54 abstentions and 16 no votes, in the 450-member legislature. … Read More

Canada and Germany’s ambassadors to the Ukraine say that the president’s decentralization bill does not strengthen civil rights; on the contrary, it hinders democratic processes. … Read More

You may have read recent articles in the New York Times and Washington Post that question the veracity of the unprecedented assault against the ethnic Hungarian community in Subcarpathia, Ukraine. HHRF has written an objection to the Editor of the New York Times and we urge you to write as well, no matter how briefly.… Read More