Ministry of Foreign Affairs Budapest

Hungary’s national and ethnic minorities is that, having lived within the framework of the Hungarian state for centuries, they profess a dual identity: their consciousness of being Hungarian is as strong as their nationality ties. Most left their original homeland and communities before the formation of a structured literary language, and as a consequence the languages and dialects they use to this day are in general archaic linguistic variations. This lengthy historical coexistence is an important criteria in the definition formulated in the Minority Act. “All groups of people who have lived in the territory of the Republic of Hungary for at least one century, who represent a numerical minority in the country's population, whose members are Hungarian citizens, who are distinguished from the rest of the population by their own languages, cultures, and traditions, who demonstrate a sense of belonging together that is aimed at preserving all of these and at expressing and protecting the interests of their historical communities” (Act LXXVII of 1993 on the Rights of National and Ethnic Minorities, Chapter 1, Section 1, Subsection (2)) are national and ethnic minorities recognised as constituent components of the state. This act defines the Bulgarian, Roma, Greek, Croatian, Polish, German, Armenian, Romanian, Ruthenian, Serb, Slovak, Slovene and Ukrainian ethnic groups (listed in Hungarian alphabetical order) as national or ethnic minorities native to Hungary. A characteristic feature of the situation in Hungary is that the minorities live scattered geographical throughout the country in some 1,500 settlements, and generally they also constitute a minority within these settlements. Demographic characteristics of the national and ethnic minorities