The use of Hungarian language in Slovakia was one of the issues discussed at the last meeting of the Intergroup for Traditional Minorities, National Communities and Languages (Minority Intergroup) of the European Parliament (EP) in Strasbourg.

Ildikó Kőrösi, Vice-President of SMK-MKP responsible for public administration and municipal affairs, gave a presentation to 60 representatives of nearly 20 countries on language use in public administration, while Ákos Horony, legal expert, and Örs Orosz, the leader of NGO Young Independents (Fiatal Függetlenek) , on civil and social language use.

14 percent of the population of Slovakia belong to a minority community. A minority language law had been drafted in 1999 in Slovakia, which was not voted by the Hungarian Members of the Parliament then in power as they considered it to be insufficient. That has since been proved, experts believe. According to the harmonious position shared by the experts giving a speech at the Minority Intergroup, the current Minority Language Law confers limited rights in relation to the standards in several ‘old’ EU Member States. Another problem arises from the fact that regulations on existing language rights are very fragmented, illogical and inconsistent, and are therefore not at all ‘user-friendly’ — which has an adverse effect on the willingness of the use of Hungarian language in formal relations. However, a similar, or even major problem is that enforcing these ‘narrow’ and ‘non-user-friendly’ rights in practice is excessively cumbersome; public bodies often deliberately boycott their duties in this area. Approximately 95% of bilingual forms are not available, Hungarian-speaking officials are not in sufficient number at public bodies etc.
(www.mkp.sk, 18 May 2017)