BUDAPEST: The Hungarian government will help 155 businesses owned by ethnic Hungarian families in Slovenia with a combined 500 million forints (EUR 1.6m) from this year’s national budget, under a programme aimed at promoting Hungarian communities in the Carpathian Basin. The contracts were signed by Levente Magyar, Hungary’s deputy foreign minister, and winning bidders in north-eastern Slovenia’s Dobrovnik (Dobronak) on Monday. At the signing ceremony, Magyar said that the scheme was aimed at “reversing the decades-long assimilation of Slovenian Hungarians”. The Hungarian government will set aside another 500 million forints for similar purposes in 2018. As we wrote, Hungary’s government has so far placed about 9 billion forints (EUR 29.6m) in grants and credit with businesses in the framework of an economic development programme in Vojvodina (Vajdaság), Serbia‘s northernmost region with a large ethnic Hungarian population, the state secretary for economic diplomacy said in Subotica.
PM Orbán calls for EU budget to be put on ‘fair footing’
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