Hungary pressures Ukraine to recognize entire Transcarpathia as 'Traditionally Hungarian'
The Hungarian government demands that Ukraine recognise the entire territory of Transcarpathia, even areas where ethnic Hungarians have never lived, as "traditionally Hungarian" territory, according to an article by Evropeyska Pravda. This demand is one of 11 points that Ukraine received in January 2024 from Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó, which had not been disclosed publicly until now. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán agreed to support the start of Ukraine's EU membership negotiations only if Ukrainian authorities publicly committed to these 11 demands.
The article by European Pravda states that the most problematic point concerns the identification of areas in Ukraine with a special level of guaranteed rights for Hungarians, stipulating that Budapest demands automatic recognition of all settlements in Transcarpathia as "traditionally Hungarian."
"Even those where Hungarians have never historically lived. The basis is that the proportion of Hungarians in the Transcarpathian region was over 10% according to the 2001 census and previous years," the article notes.
Currently, Ukrainian legislation includes a rule stating that a settlement can be recognised for the "traditional" residence of a minority if at least 10% of its population has belonged to a particular ethnic group over the past 100 years. However, Orbán's government demands the abolition of this 10% rule entirely.
"This means that if a certain number of people have lived traditionally, it's considered 'Hungarian' territory," journalists note.
Additionally, official Budapest insists that Ukraine uses only the 2001 census, despite the number of Hungarians living in Transcarpathia having almost halved since then, mainly due to Orbán distributing Hungarian passports.
Journalists from European Pravda explained that the reason behind this insistence is that Orbán's administration recognises that the Hungarian population proportion in Transcarpathia has dropped below 10%.
"Budapest now sees an opportunity to use this historic chance to force Ukraine into restoring the 'Hungarianess' that no longer exists in reality," the article reads.
At the time of publication, Ukraine's Foreign Ministry press office had not commented on Hungary's demands.
On 26 June, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó stated that Hungary supports the "consensus of six points" proposed by China and Brazil for resolving the Russian-Ukrainian war.
On 18 June, Hungarian authorities decided that Ukrainian citizens could obtain residence permits even with expired passports.