The Hungarian Coalition Party (SMK) representatives in the European Parliament (EP) have said they will not support a petition to re-examine Slovak legislation on the Beneš Decrees, party vice-chairman Jozsef Berényi told the TASR newswire.
Representatives of a number of Hungarian organisations submitted a petition to the EP on April 22 condemning a resolution passed last year by the Slovak Parliament that declared the Beneš Decrees inalienable.
The petition was submitted by 147 associations that maintain the Decrees are incompatible with the idea of a united Europe because they violate human rights. The petition's signatories demand that the EP examine whether the Slovak Parliament's resolution complies with European law and have called on Slovakia to repeal what they have deemed anti-Hungarian legislation, such as a law ruling out reparations for unlawful state conduct before February 25, 1948 (the date of the communist revolution in Czechoslovakia).
Berényi said that resolving the issue of collective guilt "in a rational way and without pointless emotions" outside Slovakia will not contribute positively to Slovak-Hungarian relations. He added that SMK would not attempt to resolve the issue of the Decrees during this term.
[The Beneš Decrees of 1945 ordered many ethnic Germans and Hungarians deported from the former Czechoslovakia for alleged collaboration with the Nazis during WWII. - ed. note]. TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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