BUDAPEST: A 500 million forint (EUR 1.6m) package proposed in Hungary’s 2017 budget would help ethnic Hungarians in Slovenia in terms of boosting the local economy, increasing employment and providing incentives for people to stay in their homeland, a lawmaker of the ruling Fidesz party said in Slovenia’s Dobronak on Wednesday.
Károly Pánczél, the head of the national cohesion committee of the Hungarian parliament, told a press conference after a meeting of the body held in Slovenia that the programme involves plans for a pilot farm to promote local products, as well as opening a Hungarian-language school and students’ hostel.
Pánczél said that the government was planning to increase financing for the programme in the following years, and added that the annual total could reach several billion forints. Local ethnic Hungarian leader Ferenc Horváth said his community was suffering from a lack of Hungarian schools and church organisations, as well as a tendency of young people leaving. He voiced hope that the Hungarian government’s programme and the planned reopening of the Hungarian consulate general in Lendava (Lendva) would be of great assistance to Slovenia’s ethnic Hungarians. Earlier in the day, members of the parliamentary delegation met with local Hungarian leaders and unveiled a plaque in memory of ethnic Hungarians who died in 1945.
