Fico's government would tighten Slovakia’s language law, fining Hungarian-populated settlements when using Hungarian instead of the official language

Robert Fico's government intends to tighten Slovakia's language law, Népszava has reported. The tightening was initiated by the far-right Minister of Culture, Martina Šimkovičová, who says the move is not aimed against the Hungarian minority. At the same time, the justification in the law essentially states that Hungarian-majority municipalities with no or very small Slovak population where information on the local authorities is only displayed in Hungarian, or in a bigger print, and the name of the municipality is also given in Hungarian, will be fined.

"The amendment to the language law drafted by the Slovak Ministry of Culture is absurd, it is directed against the Hungarian minority and is taking Slovakia back to the 1990s. This law, steeped in nationalism, has often restricted and still restricts the rights of the country's population to freely disseminate and receive information in their mother tongue, and it also restricts the freedom of entrepreneurship," the Slovak liberal party Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) said at a press conference on Wednesday, opposing the tightening.

Népszava reports that news emerged a week ago that the Slovak Ministry of Culture was considering tightening the language law in order to "consolidate the status of the state language and guarantee efficient state control".

As for the Hungarian government, for now, only Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó has reacted to the news on Thursday, when he said that "the Hungarian government is closely following the potential amendment of the Slovak language law and has a clear expectation that there should be no regression in the area of minority rights". According to Szijjártó, the Hungarian ambassador in Bratislava has already consulted with the Slovak government's commissioner for minority affairs.

However, there's nothing the commissioner for minorities can do about the amendment if it is adopted by parliament, Népszava adds.