HUNGARY has refused to say how many Slovak citizens have applied for Hungarian citizenship.
“Taking the law on protection of personal information into consideration, the Hungarian government does not provide information or statistics about the persons who applied for Hungarian citizenship,” Ákos Lukas Bencze of the Hungarian Ministry for Public Administration and Justice told the SITA newswire.
The statistics from Serbia and Romania are known and in each country thousands of people have requested Hungarian citizenship after the government of Viktor Orbán made it easier for ethnic Hungarians living outside the country to apply for citizenship. According to the Balkan Insight news portal, the Hungarian government received 8,000 citizenship applications from the Serbian autonomous region of Vojvodina, which is home to many ethnic Hungarians living in that country.
Hungary also received applications from persons living in Slovakia and Ukraine but their exact number is not known. SITA wrote that at this time it does not appear that there are a significant number of applications from Slovakia.
The citizenship law adopted by the Hungarian Parliament in May 2010 permits ethnic Hungarians living outside Hungary to apply for citizenship if they prove their Hungarian origin, can speak the Hungarian language, and pose no threat to the general public or national security.
