Representation of National and Ethnic Minorities in the Hungarian Parliament

Abstract

The paper focuses on the history of the national minority representation in the Hungarian parliament. The old Hungarian Kingdom was traditionally a multicultural country. The half of population did not have Hungarian origin in the 19^th century. The minority issue became the one of most sensitive problems in the period of nation-state building. The situation changed after World War I when Hungary lost two-thirds of its territory. The new Hungary in the interwar period was a relatively ethnically homogenous country with a nationalist political regime. Before 1918, the national minorities had parliamentarian representation based on general liberal electoral rules. The electoral legislation did not know the preferential system of minority representation. The situation was similar also in the interwar period. The leaders of official national minority associations under communist influence represented the national minorities during the period of socialist regime. The issue of minority representation in parliament started to play a very important role after the democratic transition. Despite on the original plans, the new Hungarian electoral legislation did not guarantee special parliamentary representation for national and ethnic minorities. The system of preferential representation was born only in 2011 in the framework of the redesign of the Hungarian electoral law. Currently, the list submitted by the national self-government of concrete national or ethnic minority needs for the achieving of parliamentarian mandate only 25% of ballots, which is necessary for achieving of normal mandate by regular (ideological) political parties. The German minority has achieved this mandate in 2018 and 2022. Other minorities have in parliaments the spokespersons with special consultative status. The Hungarian model is relatively original in the Central European region. It did not recognise the plural electoral law and it distinguish between the small and middle size minorities.