Hungarian American Coalition News, 2004 (13. évfolyam, 1-3. szám)
2004 / 2. szám
Slovak or Slovene neighbors to address them in Hungarian, and in turn, would answer in Slovak or Slovene. As we join the European Union, a second realm of politics will augment domestic politics: European politics. European politics will be not only a novelty in our region, but also an unpleasant surprise for some domestic politicians, especially the ethnocentric politicians of Hungary's neighboring countries, but also for the Left with communist roots. According to their collectivist convictions, the citizen is a subject of the state; the state wields authority over him and expects unconditional loyalty from him. After the accession, however, European politics can operate independently from domestic politics; the politician is responsible only to his electorate. A member of the European Parliament represents not the state of which he is a citizen, but the citizens who elected him, and he is supposed to cooperate not with members elected from the same country - although that is certainly possible - but with other European representatives who profess similar values. In the case of the Hungarians, representatives will cooperate with other Hungarian and European representatives who pursue or support identical national political goals. The Hungarian who is not from Hungary - if he becomes a European MP - can freely represent his nation, regardless of the ignoble impulses of domestic politics. European politics open further vistas for us. In the European Parliament, ethnic Hungarian representatives will not be limited to citizens of Hungary. Hungarian representatives from Slovakia can use their native language within the Union (a right they do not have in the Slovak parliament). From now on, the documents of the European Union will also be available in Hungarian. In this way the Hungarian language will gain greater significance in the Carpathian Basin. By using EU channels, some of the issues facing the minority Hungarian communities may escape the labyrinth of domestic politics: if such questions become part of European politics, the range of exclusive domestic jurisdiction is reduced. The appearance of Hungarian politics within the European Union may result in a peculiar situation: it may make it evident that Hungarian national politics cannot be identified with state politics. This will be an entirely new phenomenon in European politics, most of whose leaders are still wedded to the idea that the nation is coterminous with the state. Perhaps, through an integrated Hungarian representation in the EU, European politicians will come to understand the Hungarian question, which in turn may benefit the whole of Europe. Within this EU framework, the cross-border integration of the interests of the Hungarian nation becomes possible; issues affecting the Hungarian nation can leave the confines of both party politics and state politics. European integration had its seeds in a multipurpose regional cooperation: the consolidation of French and German coal and steel production in a region that was previously, because of these rival national industries, dedicated to the service of war. After the war, industrial integration was considered a means of making peace and reducing tension, and it evidently succeeded in both. In the French-German border area, the national coal and steel industries were identified as sources of potential danger. But what is the reason for the unstable equilibrium and the malleable condition of harmony in the Carpathian Basin? There is no economically strategic area in the Carpathian Basin that could compare to the coal and steel production of the Ruhr or Saar regions, yet tensions still exist. These tensions were not resolved either by the European Stability Pact stemming from the truncated Balladur Plan of 1992, or by the misguided bilateral “basic treaties” among the countries of the Carpathian Basin. The answer to this question is easy: the tensions are not derived from the presence of the Hungarians, but from the artificial division of the Hungarian nation. And the forced experiments of the 1990s did not bring improvements, because they did not mitigate the consequences of this mutilation of a nation. June 2004 - Hungarian American Coalition - 5
