“It is perhaps the only country in the world that neighbors itself,” Magyar said, referring to Hungarian minorities living in neighboring countries along the border with Hungary.
Since the disintegration of Hungary after the First World War, a large Hungarian minority has lived in Romania, Slovakia, Transcarpathia, Serbia and Croatia.
In a speech published on Facebook, Magyar once again criticized the current application of the Beneš decrees in Slovakia. “We must stand up for the Hungarians, whose private property is still being confiscated on the basis of Beneš’s decrees. Anyone who dares to criticize it is threatened with prison,” stated the Prime Minister of Hungary.
Criticism from Bratislava
Slovak Foreign Minister Juraj Blanár strongly rejected Magyar’s vision of history. “No, dear Prime Minister of Hungary. Your borders, and our borders, are clearly determined thanks to the peace negotiations in Trianon after the First World War and reaffirmed after the Second World War, where, by the way, Hungary was on the side of the losers,” Blanár said on Facebook.
The head of Slovak diplomacy recalled that thanks to the heroes of the Slovak National Uprising, Slovakia definitively sided with the anti-fascist coalition. “We reject any questioning of the borders, territorial integrity or sovereignty of the Slovak Republic,” added Blanár.
Friendly and constructive relations between Slovakia and Hungary were conditioned by Blanár’s rejection of “false tones of irredentism and questioning of history” on the part of Hungarian politicians.
Every year on Hungarian Unity Day, Hungary commemorates the signing of the Trianon Peace Treaty on June 4, 1920. The treaty established the borders of the Hungarian state, as the successor of Hungary after the end of the First World War. For Hungary, the Treaty of Trianon is the embodiment of a national grievance, because approximately three million Hungarians found themselves outside the borders.
