Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)
Annex
Most Frequent Stereotypes Concerning Slovak-Hungarian Relations... Whenever Slovak politicians and/or constitution officials argue that the standard of minority rights in Slovakia is higher than average, they are referring particularly to the rights of ethnic Hungarians. But we just demonstrated that the practical situation in the field of parliamentary representation of national minorities is virtually identical in Slovakia and Hungary as national minorities are not represented in either country’s parliament. Representation of SMK-MKP in the National Council of the Slovak Republic is the result of a coincidence of circumstances as opposed to implementation of explicitly guaranteed specific minority rights. Are there any countries that guarantee to their national minorities representation in the legislative assembly despite already described legislative and technical problems? There are relatively many such countries around the world as well as in Europe. Among new EU member states, that number includes Slovenia, Romania and Poland. For instance, Slovenia’s constitution views both the Italian and the Hungarian minority as constituent elements that are guaranteed parliamentary representation regardless of the number of ballots they receive. The country has a special registry of minority voters who have in their disposal two ballots one of which must be cast for minority candidates of their choice. In Romania, the situation is even more liberal on the first glimpse. The right to be represented in the national parliament’s lower house is guaranteed even to minorities whose total number is lower than the number of votes necessary to clinch one mandate. These minorities are truly doubleprivileged. On the other hand, this practice causes problems because the promise of clinching parliamentary seats generates still new minorities some of whom are not even considered autochthonous on Romania’s territory. The recently adopted constitution of Kosovo also guarantees parliamentary representation to all six officially recognized national minorities. The Serbian minority is further privileged by a mechanism that guarantees parties representing ethnic Serbs additional 10 seats in the 120-member assembly on top of the seats acquired in regular political competition (i.e. like SMK-MKP in Slovakia).4 A question arises whether it would not be most logical to compare the situation of ethnic Hungarians in Slovakia to that of ethnic Slovaks in Hungary. There is hardly a more logical argument - or so it seems on the first glimpse. However, it is important to realize that these two national minorities do not typologically belong to the same category: Slovak language enclaves in Hungary’s Lowland were formed over centuries as part of internal migration 287
