Szijjarto: Hungary not to support Ukraine’s integration as long as Hungarian schools at risk

Written by BT/MTI

Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto held talks with Ilze Brands Kheris, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights of the United Nations, in New York on Friday evening and told her that Hungary could not support Ukraine’s Transatlantic and European integration as long as ethnic Hungarian schools were “at risk” in the country.

“While we are taking in refugee children from Ukraine in 1,300 schools and kindergartens in Hungary, there are 99 Hungarian primary and secondary schools in Ukraine that are at risk of being closed down because of the local education law,” Szijjarto said on Facebook.

Several laws have been passed in Ukraine since 2015 that gradually infringed on the rights of the neighbouring country’s minorities to use their mother tongue, he said.

“Over the past eight years, Ukrainian authorities kept promising us to resolve this problem, but they have in fact done nothing to that effect,” the foreign minister said, adding that he informed the UN assistant secretary-general about Hungary’s position on Ukraine’s integration.