The Day of Slovaks in Hungary was celebrated in Pálháza, a village on the Slovak border in north-eastern Hungary, on Saturday. In his address after an ecumenical service in the local Catholic church, Human Resources Minister Zoltán Balog emphasised the importance of friendship and mutual trust between the Hungarian and Slovak nations.
The number of those declaring themselves Slovaks in Hungary has increased by 70 percent to 30,000 over the past ten years, he said. Balog pointed to Hungary’s new law allowing the country’s 13 ethnic minorities to delegate representatives to the national assembly and facilitating that an address could be made in parliament in their mother tongue from 2014 on.
(MTI)
