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Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban showed up at the last match of the Hungarian national football team with a scarf on which was printed the map of Great Hungary, which also includes a piece of Transylvania. The images were published on his Facebook page.
The map of Greater Hungary is a symbol of Hungarian revisionism used more and more often by the officials from Budapest.
Orban’s move comes just a few days after a discussion with the Romanian Foreign Minister in which the two officials also addressed “the issue of private visits to Romania by some Hungarian officials and inappropriate public statements sent by them”.
The detail on the scarf worn by Orban was pointed out by REPER MEP Alin Mituța. “Irresponsible behavior of Viktor Orban, who showed himself today wearing a scarf with the map of Greater Hungary. It’s a revisionist gesture that puts Orban alongside Putin, who also dreams of border changes. It’s another unacceptable message from the Hungarian Prime Minister, after the one in which he spoke a little while ago about the “pure race”, which reminded of the Nazi period. Orban must account for such actions incompatible with the status of a member of the family of liberal democracies,” Mituța posted on his Facebook account.
It is not the first time that Viktor Orban uses the map of Greater Hungary. Two years ago, the Prime Minister of Hungary wished success to high school students in the baccalaureate exam from the history test with a subtle message – the Prime Minister published an image of a globe with the political map of the world from 1862, in the foreground being the Habsburg Empire and Great Hungary.
“Wishful thinking,” replied the former Romanian Prime Minister at the time, Ludovic Orban.
Slovenia also reacted back then, with President Borut Pahor stating that this was not the first public appearance of the map in question and that this could be understood as the expression of territorial claims, which should concern “the public and democratic politicians “.
On Tuesday, Ukraine’s government has also announced that it will summon Hungary’s ambassador for explanations after Viktor Orban showed up at a football match wearing a scarf with a map of Greater Hungary printed on it, the Ukrainian foreign ministry, Reuters reported.
“The promotion of revisionist ideas in Hungary does not contribute to the development of Ukrainian-Hungarian relations and is not in line with the principles of European policies,” a ministry spokesman, Oleg Nikolenko, said on Facebook.
Greater Hungary, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a multinational construct with a bicephalous government in which Hungary and Austria dominated a large number of other nationalities, including Romanians and Ukrainians, collapsed after defeat in World War I.
Great Hungary included, among others, the Ukrainian territory of Transcarpathia but also territories such as Transylvania, Banat, Crisana and Maramureș, northern Serbia and the territory of today’s Croatia and Slovakia.
Also on Tuesday, Viktor Orban himself reacted to the incident stirred by his scarf. “Football is not politics. Let’s not see what is not there,” the Hungarian Prime Minister wrote on Facebook.
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