WHAT UKRAINE SHOULD EXPECT FROM THE NEW HUNGARIAN GOVERNMENT ON THE MINORITY QUESTION

Among the first meetings Péter Magyar held after his parliamentary election victory were those with representatives of the Hungarian minorities in Serbia, Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine. According to László Gubík, the leader of the ethnic Hungarian political party in Slovakia ‘Hungarian Alliance’, the incoming prime minister gave assurances that the policy of supporting ethnic Hungarians beyond Hungary's borders would continue.

And indeed it has: on 21 April, in a phone call with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, Magyar stressed the need to annul the ‘Beneš Decrees’, to reject the imposition of collective guilt on ethnic Hungarians, and to end the confiscation of their property on the basis of those post-war laws.

On the question of the rights of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine, Magyar began actively pushing the issue almost immediately after his election. Throughout April and into early May, some media speculation appeared about the possibility that the new Hungarian government might deploy the so-called ‘Orbán ultimatum. This was an eleven-point set of demands that had been presented to the press in mid-2024, with the threat of blocking Ukraine’s accession to the EU if they were not fulfilled.

Technical consultations between the Ukrainian and Hungarian sides began in May with the aim of working towards a joint position. In interviews with Polish media, the Hungarian prime minister referred to eleven points containing his government’s demands on the rights of ethnic Hungarians in Ukraine, but did not specify their details. Magyar pointed to the need to guarantee "the right to language, to culture, and to administrative autonomy." This rhetoric fuelled concerns that the new authorities in Budapest would continue to advance the position of the previous government.

In early June, negotiations between the Ukrainian and Hungarian teams on the minority rights question were finalised. The Hungarian prime minister was quick to announce a "historic agreement" enshrining guarantees for ethnic Hungarians in Zakarpattia covering cultural, linguistic, and educational rights.

The basis for the document was the Ukrainian government's Action Plan of May 2025, which is effectively a component of EU integration policy. It outlines a set of measures for aligning Ukraine's approach to the protection of national minorities with European standards. From the Ukrainian side, the steps taken are therefore presented as fulfilling EU accession requirements rather than granting specific concessions to the Hungarians of Zakarpattia.

At present, the positions of the Ukrainian and Hungarian governments on the minority question are aligned. The demands for the creation of cultural autonomy and a separate parliamentary representation were removed from the agenda during negotiations.

For a broader understanding of how relations between Ukraine and Hungary over the Zakarpattian Hungarians are likely to develop, we can look to the example of Hungarian-Slovak and Hungarian-Romanian relations on the question of ethnic Hungarian minorities in those countries.

The question of Hungarians abroad has a special place in the Hungarian consciousness, with deep roots connected to the outcome of the First World War. Its excessive politicisation, however, is a modern development which took its current form during Viktor Orbán's premiership in the 2010s.

Slovakia and Romania aligned their policies on the Hungarian minority with Budapest in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Pan-European structures played a significant role in this, arguably even more so than Hungary itself, as the issue formed part of the EU accession process. The EU and the Council of Europe made the protection of minorities and ‘good neighbourly relations’ a political condition of membership, thus obliging Bratislava and Bucharest to cooperate with Budapest.

At the same time, since Hungary was itself going through the EU integration process, Budapest’s position was moderated by European structures which prevented it from taking on an aggressive character towards its neighbours. This was illustrated, for example, by repeal of the 2001 Status Law under EU pressure. The law had granted additional benefits in Hungary to ethnic Hungarians who were citizens of neighbouring countries.

Pan-European bodies had an interest in expanding minority rights in the prospective member states of Central and South-Eastern Europe, seeing this as a safeguard against potential conflicts along ethnic and religious lines.

It is also worth noting that the Hungarian minority in Slovakia and Romania constituted, and continues to constitute, a substantial share of the population at the time of those countries' EU integration. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, ethnic Hungarians made up 9.7% of Slovakia’s population and 6.6% of Romania’s, making them the largest minority in both countries. These numbers translated into political presence, as national-level Hungarian parties in Slovakia and Romania played an active role in advancing the demands of their communities. At times, these parties even called for political autonomy in areas of concentrated Hungarian settlement while the Hungarian authorities never officially made such requests themselves.

In Romania, the ethnic Hungarian party was included in the ruling coalition around the turn of the millennium, which helped secure cultural and educational rights for the local community. In that situation, direct pressure from Budapest was unnecessary. Hungarian authorities continue to conduct their national policy towards ethnic Hungarians primarily through support for, and cooperation with, political representatives in the relevant countries. This takes place at the national-level through political parties, and at the regional level through local administrations.

On the question of direct bilateral relations, in the second half of the 1990s Hungary signed normalisation treaties with Romania and Slovakia that provided a framework, among other things, for the protection of minority rights. These treaties, together with European documents, formed the basis for Bratislava's and Bucharest's adoption of minority language laws. In Slovakia, such a law permitted the use of the Hungarian language in public life and official documentation, and established a requirement for local authorities to respond to requests in the minority language in localities where Hungarians constituted 20% of residents according to the most recent census (subsequently amended to 15%). Romania's equivalent law retained the 20% threshold, and in 2003 constitutional amendments were introduced to further codify those rights.

Separate laws in Slovakia and Romania, supplementing the relevant provisions of both countries' constitutions, guaranteed the rights to receive primary and secondary education in Hungarian within the framework of ‘national minority schools’ and to sit final examinations in that language. Like the language laws, these acts were introduced largely thanks to the efforts of the minority community itself and of European structures.

Slovakia has a state-funded higher education institution where teaching is conducted in Hungarian, while in Romania this function is performed by a private university. This naturally creates conditions for Hungary to project soft power and advance its own interests. In Slovakia, this caused a scandal when textbooks produced or funded by Hungary for Hungarian-language schools were found to contain the discriminatory Hungarian name for Slovakia, ‘Upper Land’, and other similar narratives.

On the question of cultural freedoms, public broadcasters in Slovakia and Romania air programmes in Hungarian and national governments contribute to the funding and development of minority cultural programmes. There are no additional legal acts on ‘cultural autonomy’ at the national-level in Slovakia and Romania, although dedicated state bodies exist to deal with minority cultural affairs. It is likely, then, that the Hungarian government will push for Ukraine to direct additional funding towards cultural initiatives and projects for Ukrainian Hungarians.

The use of national symbols, and specifically the Hungarian state flag and anthem, is not prohibited in either Romania or Slovakia. This question was not resolved during negotiations between Kyiv and Budapest, but Ukraine will seemingly have to grant formal permission for the minority to use ‘national symbols’. This could be done along the lines of Slovak and Hungarian legislation, under which foreign symbols may only be displayed in state institutions and schools alongside the state symbols of the country in question.

Administrative autonomy is the most contested of all these issues. The Hungarian government has never officially raised it in relation to Slovakia or Romania. Within the Hungarian minorities of those countries, the matter is not on the agenda, and national governments firmly refuse even to discuss such prospects, emphasising their unitary constitutional arrangements.

In Ukraine, Hungarians constitute a far smaller share of the population making a demand for autonomy less logical still. Although Viktor Orbán expressed such wishes in 2014, as autonomy would open up additional opportunities for Hungarian political, economic, and cultural influence, the prospect of such a development is minimal.

Equally unlikely is direct parliamentary representation for ethnic Hungarians. Such parties are the primary channel through which Budapest exercises influence over the local community and over national politics. The chances of the situation changing are currently negligible, given Ukraine's existing electoral system.

In Romania, the Hungarian party consistently wins seats in parliament at general elections. In Slovakia, by contrast, the local political force of the Hungarian minority has failed to clear the relevant threshold since 2010 and neither Orbán (for understandable reasons) nor Magyar has pressed Bratislava to guarantee the ethnic Hungarians a permanent place in the legislature.

Ukraine has therefore agreed to provide virtually all of the rights that Hungarians currently enjoy in Slovakia and Romania. It is unlikely that the new Hungarian government will be in a position to demand more of Ukraine than Hungarians currently have in Slovakia and Romania. Budapest's room for manoeuvre is further constrained by the absence of a strong national-level political party of the Hungarian minority.

Billi-Villi is an analytical media outlet that explains the mechanics of decisions, the motivations of politicians, hidden interests, and consequences shaping the situation in the world and in Ukraine today.