Slovakia slams Hungarian president over language claim
(BRATISLAVA) - Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico on Monday slammed the Hungarian president for his reported claim that ethnic Hungarians there should learn Slovak only as a foreign language.
"It's a malicious and premeditated attack against Slovakia's integrity... an attempt to disintegrate Slovakia," Fico told journalists.
During a visit to Serbia last weekend, President Laszlo Solyom said that "Hungarians not only in Serbia but also in Romania and Slovakia should learn the official language as a foreign language," according to Hungary's MTI news agency.
Solyom's spokesman, Ferenc Kuzmin, said that "it's important for ethnic Hungarians in neighbouring countries to learn the official language as well as possible," the agency wrote.
"But these children need books and special ways of learning," Kuzmin added, citing the example of Serbia's specialised curriculum for teaching the country's language to ethnic Hungarians.
Fico said that Slovakia expected all its citizens to master the official language, whatever their background.
Ethnic Hungarians make up some 10 percent of Slovakia's 5.4-million-strong population. There are also major Hungarian minority communities in Romania and Serbia.
"We consider it inappropriate, un-European and counter-productive for good relations between our countries to address such claims to Slovakia from third countries," Slovakia's Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak said.
Ties between Slovakia and Hungary, two former communist-bloc neighbours, have been tense since 2006, when the far-right Slovak National Party, known for its animosity towards minorities, joined Slovakia's coalition government.
Slovaks were dominated by Hungary under the Austro-Hungarian empire before World War I.
The creation of independent Czechoslovakia in 1918 as the empire collapsed stirred resentment among some Hungarians, as did the loss of territory to Romania and Serbia.
Czechoslovakia split amicably into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993 after the country's communist regime was toppled peacefully in 1989.
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