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Hungary Vetoes NATO Statement On Ukraine Over Kyiv's Education, Language Laws

By RFE/RL October 31, 2019

Hungarian officials have vetoed a joint NATO statement about Ukraine because it didn't contain language criticizing Kyiv for its education and language laws that Budapest says deprive the rights of the Hungarian minority in the neighboring country.

Hungary, in particular, believes the country's education law restricts the right of Ukraine's ethnic Hungarian minority of approximately 125,000 people to be educated in their native language.

Kyiv passed the law in 2017, which emphasizes the teaching of Ukrainian in publicly-funded schools and curtails the teaching of Russian and other minority languages, such as Romanian and Hungarian.

It doesn't forbid pupils from seeking further language study in their native language at private institutions or through other avenues, such as self-organized groups or home tutoring.

Kyiv maintains that the law is meant to ensure that all Ukrainian citizens can speak the state's official language, and it denies the law is discriminatory.

The ongoing spat has prompted Budapest to previously block all meetings of the NATO-Ukraine Commission -- the key format for bilateral cooperation between Kyiv and the Western military alliance -- at all levels above that of ambassadors.

In June, Brussels dropped criticism of the educational law, pushed mostly by Hungary, at the yearly EU-Ukraine summit.

The NATO-Ukraine Commission has also reconvened with the alliance's leadership currently on a two-day visit to Ukraine that ends on October 31.

Still, Hungary says that changes to the education and language laws hamper minority rights and Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government has chided Kyiv for not allowing ethnic Hungarians there to hold dual citizenship.

A Hungarian consul in the westernmost Ukrainian region, Zakarpattya, where most ethnic Hungarians reside, was expelled in October 2018 after video emerged showing the diplomat issuing Hungarian passports at a citizenship swearing-in ceremony.

Ukraine doesn't allow dual citizenship.

Meanwhile, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto dismissed criticism that Hungary's relationship with Russia is uncomfortably friendly as Russian President Vladimir Putin was meeting with Orban in Buda Castle on October 30.

"These are laughable insults on [the] part of our Western friends," Szijjarto said, as cited by the Associated Press.

Orban followed up on the minister's comments, saying that the NATO statement was still being finalized so that it includes at his behest clauses that state Ukraine should adopt changes recommended to the disputed laws by the Venice Commission and legal experts for the Council of Europe, the continent's top human rights body.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/hungary-vetoes- nato-statement-on-ukraine-over-kyiv-s- education-language-laws/30245424.html

Copyright (c) 2019. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.