Hungary Adopts Citizenship Law and Slovakia Retaliates

Hungary's new Parliament adopted a law in late May granting citizenship to ethnic Hungarians living in neighboring nations nearly 9 decades after Hungary lost 2/3'rds of its territory under the Treaty of Trianon following WW I. It is estimated there are 3 million ethnic Hungarians living in Slovakia, Serbia, Ukraine and Romania. Persons wanting to take advantage of this new law would have to prove they are of Hungarian origin and speak the language. The law would become effective January 1, 2011.

Slovakia immediately retaliated with introducing legislation banning double citizenship, with the Slovak Cabinet passing an amendment to its Citizenship Act to revoking it from any 'Slovak' who applies for foreign citizenship anywhere in the world.

To read more on this see: http://tinyurl.com/27lcw4o and http://tinyurl.com/2a9pjod

Jan Meisels Allen
IAJGS Director-at-large
Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee