“A tragedy happened 101 years ago” when the Trianon Peace Treaty was signed on June 4, but “we have survived, and the Hungarian nation is doing well”, House Speaker László Kövér said on Friday, marking the anniversary of the treaty which ceded two thirds of Hungary’s territory and nearly three fifths of its population to neighboring countries.
Speaking on commercial HírTV in the evening, Kövér highlighted the nation’s achievement of survival despite its being reduced not only in terms of territory and population but also being stripped of most of its resources and military capabilities.
Kövér also spoke highly of the achievements of the ethnic Hungarian communities in neighboring countries, whose members “stayed a part of the Hungarian nation but also lived as loyal taxpayers of those countries… and contributed to their development with hard work”.
The Hungarian government has provided assistance to ethnic Hungarians to help them prosper in their homelands and ensure a perspective, Kövér said. He suggested, however, that promoting the rights of ethnic Hungarians had been neglected, assuming that “the political regime change and democracy would solve those problems”. The European Union was also hoped to address those issues, but “50 million citizens in indigenous minorities are drifting more and more to the periphery of the EU’s focus”, he said.
Kövér slammed the European Parliament for “working against democracy in Europe rather than promoting it”. He insisted that proponents of plans “to vote for party lists compiled in Brussels” are “either ignorant of what the average voter thinks or are playing a cynical game under the pretext of democracy; they are in fact supporters of oligarchs that seek to make Europe an empire rather than the federation of independent and sovereign nation states”.
featured photo illustration by Tamás Kovács/MTI
