BackBased on the submission of the nationality self-government of a municipality, Máté Szabó has summarised his objections in several points. One of them is that the requirement of equal treatment is not observed in the Act: it allows only those nationality organisations to have candidates at nationality self-government elections which are legally qualified as of ‘public benefit’.
The Act on Nationalities makes the holding of elections dependent on population census data, but according to the Ombudsman several social and political factors exert an influence on the number of those who are ready to voluntarily confess their national identity at the population census. What is more, at the time of the 2011 population census it was not yet known what kind of role these data would play in respect of election rights. So there is a danger that it will not be possible to hold elections for national self-governments even in settlements where there is a significant number of nationality population. Considering the above, the regulation laid down in the Act unnecessarily and disproportionately restricts the right of nationality communities to set up their self-governments.
It is a restriction of the right to use one’s mother tongue that nationality self-governments must draw up minutes of their sittings in Hungarian even if the language of the sitting is the mother tongue of the given nationality; this also infringes the obligations undertaken by the State and laid down in the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages – says the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights in his petition to the Constitutional Court.
Find the full version of the press release as download below
Source: Commissioner for Fundamental Rights
