Carpathian warriors in campaign mode

Bust-up between the new Hungarian government and Slovakia on citizenship issue

IT TOOK only a few weeks for the freshly elected (and not yet incumbent) Hungarian government to further erode the country’s troublesome relations with Slovakia, its northern neighbour. Fidesz’s leader Viktor Orbán’s right-wing (still sort of a shadow-)cabinet has announced an imminent law which would allow some 3 million Hungarians living in neighbouring countries to get the Hungarian citizenship on an individual basis. As a parliamentary initiative of right-wing Fidesz group, the bill could be submitted for vote before the new government takes office next Friday.

The issue of granting citizenship to Hungarians living across the Hungarian borders is a historical debt of honour, Fidesz says, referring to the 2004 referendum which failed to put the matter on the parliamentary agenda due to low rate of participation. Under the new regulation, those of Hungarian ethnicity could apply for citizenship without being residents of the country - a possibility already granted to Hungarian non-citizens who do not come from the neighbouring countries. As the new cabinet’s foreign affairs minister János Martonyi outlined, citizenship could be obtained on individual claim and would not automatically entitle to vote in Hungary.

The announcement has sparked virulent opposition in Slovakia the government of which swaggered against the plan, threatening to give a ‘very severe response’ should the Hungarian parliament adopt the law. Amid full-swing election campaign Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has summoned the country’s Security Committee and sought the keep the incident in the limelight. While urging Mr Orbán to negotiate, Mr Fico has indicated that Slovakia considered its ethnic Hungarians’ double-citizenship a security risk. As a result, he said, the Slovak parliament may amend the constitution in a way that Slovaks obtaining Hungarian citizenship would lose their Slovak passport. Upon recalling its ambassador from Budapest, the Slovak government also voiced its intention to address international organisations such as the OSCE, saying the Hungarian step is in conflict with international law as well as with the basic treaty signed by the two countries 15 years ago.

Mr Orbán retorted that no negotiations should take place until his government was inaugurated and the new Slovak cabinet was in office.

Although Slovak law recognises the principle of double citizenship, Slovakia has the right to adopt a law to denationalize it’s citizens who are granted citizenship by other countries. This would follow a pattern shared by the Czech and Ukrainian law that (in principle) exclude double citizenship. However, the European practice tends to the opposite direction, with Austria, Romania and Germany giving ethnicity-based citizenship to their fellow nationals living across their borders (Croatia and Serbia also recognise this legal institution).

Furthermore, as a reputed political analyst, Martin Kugla argued in Slovakia’s Hospodárské Noviny newspaper, ethnic Hungarians living in Slovakia would constitute no threat to Slovakia’s sovereignty nor to it’s national security.

Just alike many others, this latest episode of the Hungarian-Slovak political wrestling (albeit being fought on the barricades of national interest) was born from domestic political interests of the respective parties.

Hungary’s new government has seized the opportunity to reaffirm its patriotic image in the face of Jobbik, an extreme-right party ringing chauvinistic bells (now in the Parliament) over Hungarians’ putative role in the region. A sonorous, patriotic upbeat may also help Fidesz divert attention from its grandiose economic plans which shall gradually get in tune with a bitter reality that offers little room for tax cuts.

On the other side of the Danube, Mr Fico must also feel somewhat relieved.

Slovakia’s PM (who has earned an ill fame in Europe by reaffirming the notorious ‘Benes-decrees’ and by enacting an anti-Hungarian linguistic regulation) was offered another chance to parade in the guise of a charismatic leader. Instead of dissecting his cabinets’ failures, the media now turns to the old theme of national interest, which is seemingly at odds with the feelings of ethnic-Hungarian fellow citizens. Mr Fico is apparently seeking to make up to voters with inclination to chauvinism in an effort to spare another four years in coalition with the extreme-right Slovak National Party. Extremist voters appear utterly important indeed: even the more moderate Chrsitian Democratic Union Party (Fico’s main rival) has joined the rally for them while dragging the dispute to the European Parliament.

After several years of arrogant, anti-Hungarian rhetoric, Mr Fico is now distressed to see his new Hungarian counterpart who doesn’t lag him when it comes to teeth, and whose response seems just as wise as Bratislava’s recent wrangling. Leaders of Hungarian minority parties in Slovakia have been warning Fidesz not to weaken their positions by awakening Slovak nationalist sentiments during the campaign - to no avail. Again, a special session of the Hungarian Parliament commemorating the Treaties of Trianon (which marked the grave of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the birth of Czechoslovakia) on the 4^th of June may further weaken Hungarian parties in Slovakia, where elections are due on the 12^th.

Whatever the outcome of the elections may be, ethic Hungarians in Slovakia will lose on the short run, just as all Hungarians and Slovaks who are craving solutions to slightly more substantial problems like energy dependency or unemployment.

Woes of "back there" are right here now

Polish President’s death fuels mixed sentiments in Brussels

In the European Parliament, Polish grief has been all around these days. As a matter of bizarre coincidence, a memorial exhibition presenting unearthed mass-graves in Katyn was supplemented with photos of the high ranking Polish victims of the Smolensk plane crash. Otherwise rejoicing receptions of the EP get more solemn as some Poles with memorial pins arrive. Two days ago EP President Jerzy Buzek led a ceremony where Polish and other MEP’s, offices’ staff and visitors paid tribute to the victims. It was a moving event, even if most of the names were unknown for non-Polish fellows.

Still, not all of Brussels’s fine-boned technocrats sympathise with such a display of condolences.

In the EP’s canteen I happened to eavesdrop a conversation of quite a big bunch of MEP’s. Some of them I know enough to state that at least three different groups were 'represented' at that overly informal lunchtime-chat. One of these MEP’s has hinted that as tragic as it was, the president’s death wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) overwrite his gaffes and his bad fame in Brussels. The table seemed swift to find common ground along this claim. Arguments such as 'he was a Euro-sceptic trying to stop the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon', and 'he hated homosexuals' may have hit other ears around. On squelching some carefully put counter-arguments of a timid assistant, our representatives concluded that 'it’s fine back there in Poland. But here, we’re in Europe' – giving the latter word the tone of a fanfare.

Shortly: Jerzy Buzek should have kept his nation’s mourning out of the EP’s walls.

One thing some eurocrats tend to omit is that 'Europe' (i.e. the EU) remains an absurdly heterogeneous compound of nations and views. And although Mr Kaczynski was withholding his ink from the EU’s newest testament (the Lisbon Treaty) until its Irish approval, he did not balk the process as did its Czech counterpart, Vaclav Klaus. Still, he had his own view of Europe and of the role Poland deserved. He was not satisfied by the degree of influence (i.e. voting power) the new treaty guaranteed to his country which he considered to merit a bigger clout in Brussels. He was a stiff Atlanticist fearing (and irking) Russia, while hobbling reconciliation with it after the war in Georgia. Mr Kaczynski would raise many eyebrows at home and in Europe by his relentlessly rigid manner and his stubbornness to secure himself a seat on the Council meetings along with Polish PM Donald Tusk. He would take a line which was controversial (and sometimes scoffed at) in Poland as well as abroad. He was not a federalist. He was conservative and old-fashioned. But at the same time, he was the president of Poland, the far most important new member state of the EU.

Finally, he was not alone on that plane. Apart from his wife, the core leaders of the Polish national army and politics perished along with him. It is Poland’s citizens (or at least those 25 million beloved ’eurobscure’ Polish folks) to whom the EP paid tribute that day. Presidents come and go. Symbols last; especially 'here in Europe.'

Many EU officials should remake the order behind their facades and accept that the deeper the new treaties cut into states’ sovereignties (i.e.: the faster integration advances) the more frictions occur between them. Those who believe that all leaders should sign up automatically to an ever faster pace of pooling national powers do not understand democracy. Indeed, a 'united' Europe will also inherit the conflicts hitherto kept 'back there'. EU-staff is there to table proposals, not credos, and presidents’ reservation towards draft treaties may be seen as reflection instead of heresy.

However, the seamy side of the conventional European wisdom hardly gains publicity outside the EU institutions' canteens. If so, such claims get quenched by overwhelming official statements calling for compassion and unity.

Apart from some of its officials, Europe keeps valuing solidarity. These lunchtime discussions better remain ignored, stay deep in the jungle of European institutions groping for their place in a yet deeper jungle called The Treaty of Lisbon.