Foreign minister: Hungary demands legal guarantee from Kiev

Hungary wants a legal guarantee that the Ukrainian government will consult with its Hungarian minority and reach an agreement before implementing any changes to its education law, Hungary’s foreign minister said in Paris after meeting his Ukrainian counterpart and a US official on Wednesday.

In talks with Pavlo Klimkin and Wess Mitchell, US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, Péter Szijjártó noted that Hungary had stated multiple times that the education law approved last September, restricting public education in minority languages to kindergarten and primary-school students, severely infringed on the acquired rights of the Hungarian community.

“Ukraine must not implement a law on education without reaching an agreement first with representatives of the local Hungarian community,” Szijjártó said, adding that the Hungarian government insisted on receiving the relevant legal guarantees from Kiev.

He said it would be wrong to present the issue purely as a Hungarian-Ukrainian conflict.

“Ukraine has violated basic international standards on the protection of minorities,”