Mezei István: Urban development in Slovakia (Pécs-Somorja, 2010)

6. Towns along the Hungarian and Slovak border

Cross-border relations

of political topics made it also necessary to discuss the restoration of the Sándor Petőfi statue in Bratislava and simultaneously the question of the Ján Kollár memorial plaque in Budapest and their placement at worthy places. It would have been advantageous if the Hungarian version of the Slovak provisions of law and the Slovak version of the Hungarian provisions of law had been published continuously, with special attention to EU law.

The Hungarian party wanted to improve the disadvantageous situation of the Hungarian people living in Slovakia by making the problems concerning education and culture as well as those concerning civil organizations subjects of debates. This goal was served by various topics, from teachers’ further education to the refurbishment of the Thália Theatre in Košice. In 1999 the Hungarian party still had an advantage over the Slovak people, so the issue of opening a Hungarian consulate in Košice and that of an act regulating the usage of the Hungarian language could be raised. They urged the Slovak government to regard the Calvinist church as a negotiating party, what is more, in 2001, with reference to international law, they also sought to influence the Slovak municipality act, which was being drafted at that time. When these proposals were raised there were always some antitheses that were implemented by the improvement of the situation of the Slovak people living in Hungary.

The equality of the two parties required that they should regard the questions raised as equally important. Consequently, the Slovak party endeavoured to react to the Hungarian requests by making Slovak requests of the same weight. However, due to the obvious asymmetry of the populations, this could not always be solved. While, according to the 2001 census, the number of the Slovak population was 17,693 (0.17%) in Hungary, which had a population of around 10 million people, the number of the Hungarians living in Slovakia, with 5.4 million inhabitants, was 520,528 people (9.68%). Therefore it is impossible to provide both ethnic minorities with institutions in the same number, size and weight in the country where they live. An example for this is that at the statutory meeting of the joint commission of minorities the Slovak party required that the Slovak people should have political representation in Hungary just like the Hungarians have parliamentary representation and a party in Slovakia. They demanded that the Hungarian party should lengthen the time devoted to the Slovak-language programme of the Hungarian public service television and radio channels, and should ensure reception all over the coun-157