Greater Hungary

last updated 8 January 2015

Budapest

The Hungarian Supreme Court this week approved the holding of a referendum on granting dual citizenship to ethnic Hungarians from other countries. Nationalists in Hungary have been trying for years to give special rights to ethnic Hungarians living in other countries, saying Hungarians abroad are often discriminated against. Nearly 1.5 million ethnic Hungarians live in Romania alone, and Serbia and Slovakia have several hundred thousand each. But political analysts across Europe have warned that granting dual citizenship could destabilize those countries. In the Serbian province of Vojvodina, Serbian attacks on Hungarians have increased, and the Hungarian minority is beginning to talk of separatism.