Rights pact to be revised

SLOVAK Foreign Affairs Minister Ján Kubiš met his Hungarian counterpart Kinga Göncz in Brussels on October 15 to try to smooth over the tension that has plagued Slovak-Hungarian relations over the past several months.

SLOVAK Foreign Affairs Minister Ján Kubiš met his Hungarian counterpart Kinga Göncz in Brussels on October 15 to try to smooth over the tension that has plagued Slovak-Hungarian relations over the past several months.

The officials agreed to work together on revising the agreement that Slovakia and Hungary concluded in Paris in March 1995, in which both countries pledged not to decrease the level of support for minority rights within their borders.

Kubiš accepted Göncz’s recommendation that a series of meetings be held to determine which points of the agreement each country believes the other has violated. They also agreed to meet again in December to discuss the findings. Officials in Budapest have raised the issue of geography textbooks in Slovak schools for the Hungarian minority that teachers and parents have said they find unacceptable.

“Also, it seems that Hungarian schools have not received money from European Union resources, while the schools in [Slovak National Party chairman] Ján Slota’s constituency get enormously high support,” Göncz told the public Slovak Radio station. She added: “This raises the pressing question of whether the allocation is discriminatory.”

After the meeting, Kubiš told journalists that both sides realise there is much to be done to improve bilateral relations.

“There are a number of questions we’ve been waiting to ask, so we’ve agreed to meet again before the end of the year,” Kubiš told the public broadcaster Slovak Television.

Slovak-Hungarian relations have long been stormy, but tensions recently escalated dramatically when Slota made comments about Göncz in which he called her a “poor devil” and compared her to Hitler. Prime Minister Robert Fico has distanced himself from the comments, but has not condemned them outright.


Top stories

News digest: Rain causes flooding and driving difficulties in Bratislava. Slovakia under storm warning

A drunk driver gets a prison sentence, free events in Bratislava, and a corporate volunteering event returns.


9 h
Vrakuňa’s citizens presented apples washed in water with leaked toxins at the protest in 2016.

Chemical time bomb in Bratislava’s Vrakuňa keeps ticking

The state is failing to solve leaking chemical waste dump.


31. may
Jupiter (centre) and its Galilean moons: from left Ganymede, Io, Europa and Callisto. Juice with deployed antennas and arrays is in the bottom right.

From Košice to Ganymede: Slovak engineers are leaving their mark in space

Slovaks are active participants in two ongoing space missions.


20. may
The Supreme Administrative Court in Bratislava.

Q&A: How does the new justice reform affect people's lives?

The reform also known as the new map of courts became applicable on June 1 of this year.


6. jun
SkryťClose ad