Magyar: I Told Fico, Slovakia Must First Repeal Act Threatening Hungarians with Jail
Budapest/Bratislava, 21 April (TASR) - In my telephone call with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, I made it clear that we can only discuss any policy matters if we receive guarantees that Slovakia will repeal legislation threatening ethnic-Hungarians in Slovakia with imprisonment [for impugning the Benes Decrees — ed.note], and if it is clearly established that there will be no confiscation of the land of our Hungarian compatriots in Slovakia in the future on the basis of the Benes Decrees and the principle of collective guilt, Hungarian Prime Minister-elect Peter Magyar announced in a post on X on Tuesday.
"I reaffirmed to the Slovak prime minister that a Tisza government will work to strengthen Hungarian–Slovak relations and to rebuild Visegrad cooperation [V4: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia]," wrote Magyar in English, adding that the issues in question must first be clarified and resolved.
"I emphasized to Robert Fico that, for any Hungarian government, the protection of the rights of our Hungarian compatriots in Slovakia remains the highest priority in Hungarian–Slovak relations," added Magyar.
He claimed that the two prime ministers agreed to continue their discussions in person at the upcoming meeting of the European Council in Brussels.
The Slovak prime minister has also spoken about the telephone call, saying that the main aim of the conversation was to ascertain the stances of Hungary's new political leadership on reopening the Druzhba oil pipeline and on a lawsuit against the RePowerEU regulation that Slovakia and Hungary are filing against the EU with respect to the halt to Russian gas and oil flows.
Fico stated that Magyar — as he isn't yet officially prime minister — commented only in general terms on specific issues. "However, it clearly emerged from the conversation that Peter Magyar's priority in Slovak-Hungarian relations is and will be the Benes Decrees, on which we hold fundamentally different positions," declared the Slovak prime minister.
Fico added that he proposed discussing any other topics outside energy security in person. He specified that an official visit by Magyar to Slovakia or a visit by him to Budapest would be preceded by a working meeting at an EU summit in Brussels.
