In my telephone call with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico (Smer-SD), I made it clear that we can only discuss any policy matters if we receive guarantees that Slovakia will repeal legislation threatening ethnic-Hungarians in Slovakia with imprisonment [for impugning the Beneš Decrees — ed.note], and if it is clearly established that there will be no confiscation of the land of our Hungarian compatriots in Slovakia in the future on the basis of the Beneš Decrees and the principle of collective guilt, Hungarian Prime Minister-elect Peter Magyar announced on social media on Tuesday.
"I reaffirmed to the Slovak Prime Minister that a Tisza government will work to strengthen Hungarian–Slovak relations and to rebuild Visegrad cooperation [V4: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia]," wrote Magyar in English, adding that the issues in question must first be clarified and resolved.
"I emphasized to Robert Fico that, for any Hungarian government, the protection of the rights of our Hungarian compatriots in Slovakia remains the highest priority in Hungarian–Slovak relations," added Magyar.
He claimed that the two prime ministers agreed to continue their discussions in person at the upcoming meeting of the European Council in Brussels.
The Slovak Prime Minister spoke about the telephone call, saying that the main aim of the conversation was to ascertain the stances of Hungary's new political leadership on reopening the Druzhba oil pipeline and on a lawsuit against the RePowerEU regulation that Slovakia and Hungary are filing against the EU with respect to the halt to Russian gas and oil flows.
Fico stated that Magyar — as he isn't yet officially prime minister — commented only in general terms on specific issues. "However, it clearly emerged from the conversation that Peter Magyar's priority in Slovak-Hungarian relations is and will be the Beneš Decrees, on which we hold fundamentally different positions," declared the Slovak Prime Minister.
Fico added that he proposed discussing any other topics outside energy security in person. He specified that an official visit by Magyar to Slovakia or a visit by him to Budapest would be preceded by a working meeting at an EU summit in Brussels.
According to opposition MP Juraj Krupa (SaS), Magyar is calling for the abolition of the criminal offence of denying the post-war settlement, not the decrees themselves. According to Krupa, on the basis of decades-old Benes Decrees, land expropriation is still taking place in Slovakia.
"But this does not concern only Hungarians, but also people who were not even aware of it. For example, they acquired a plot of land which may in the past have been subject to expropriation, as these processes were halted in 1948 by the communists, leaving many unresolved issues that are now being misused," Krupa warned.
Tomáš Valášek from the opposition PS added that criminalizing the questioning of the Benes Decrees does not apply only to Hungarians living in Slovakia.
"This is a straightforward absurdity, a form of censorship affecting not only Hungarians living in Slovakia, but also Slovaks, including the Slovak political opposition. We expressed our opposition to this long before Mr. Magyar, and therefore, logically, we agree with him on this point," he said.
Under an amendment to the Criminal Code that came into force at the end of December, anyone who publicly questions the post-war settlement, which deprived thousands of ethnic Hungarians of property and citizenship, can be sentenced to six months in prison. Slovak President Peter Pellegrini signed the amendment before Christmas.
Source: TASR
