The moral of the Hungarian Status Law saga

The present paper deals with the debate about the fiercely disputed Hungarian Status Law and its amendments. The Law was destined to grant a special status to ethnic Hungarians living the beyond the borders of Hungary. The paper contains a brief comparison of the mainly Central and Eastern European laws, through which states grant special rights to their kinminorities. The international debate about the Hungarian Status Law is also covered by the paper. Even though several states grant special status to the members of their kin-minorities the enactment of the Hungarian Status Law triggered a surprisingly fierce debate. It is submitted that although in some details the law might have run counter certain public international law principles, the reaction to the law was mainly backed by emotional arguments and hence the whole controversy could not go beyond the level of symbols. The paper also deals with the 2003 amendment of the Law, which was enacted according to the objections raised by the neighbouring countries. The paper is an attempt to show the futility of the whole Status Law debate: it is submitted that although the 2003 amendment did not go into the very substance of the provisions of the Law at large, it did satisfy these claims by simply changing the phraseology of the Law