Hungary issues 750 passports to ethnic Hungarians living near the border

Hungarian Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Shemen said that according to a simplified scheme, 750 thousand Hungarians living in the regions bordering Hungary have received Hungarian citizenship today, the Hungary Today portal reports. The vast majority of those who received passports live within the historical framework of the Kingdom of Hungary, Shemen said, that is, in the territory of present-day Romania, Slovakia, Serbia, and Ukraine.

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The publication reports that, according to Shemen, this number may increase by another hundred thousand in the very near future.

A simplified scheme for obtaining citizenship for residents of regions bordering Hungary began to actively work in 2011. Since then, tens of thousands of ethnic Hungarians or children of Hungarians from mixed marriages have received Hungarian passports every year.

On 26 May 2010, shortly after Viktor Orbán came to power, a new citizenship law was passed. This meant that from 1 January 2011 all those who are able to prove that their parents or grandparents were Hungarian citizens can obtain citizenship in a fast, simplified way. The effect of this law was extended to the outskirts of the Kingdom of Hungary, which was finally liquidated by the Treaty of Trianon in 1920.

Zsolt Shemen admitted that neighboring countries are trying to interfere with the implementation of this law, but Hungary itself is of little concern. “This process is successful and cannot be stopped,” Shemen said, promising that this policy will continue.

In Hungary's historic borderland, approximately 2,5 million ethnic Hungarians currently live in four neighboring countries. The largest number are located in Slovakia and Romania. On the territory of Ukraine in the Transcarpathian region, the process of obtaining Hungarian passports has been actively taking place since 2011.