Orbán says they are in talks with Slovakia to clarify the meaning of their law on the Beneš Decrees

"We are in talks aiming to clarify what this law is about," Viktor Orbán said in Brussels when asked what steps the Hungarian government is taking in response to the new law passed in Slovakia, which makes questioning the Beneš Decrees punishable by imprisonment. According to the Hungarian Prime Minister, there is no provision in Hungarian law that prohibits questioning anything; only denying the Holocaust is punishable by law. However, Orbán said that in the current case in Slovakia, no one is disputing the existence of the Beneš Decrees, but rather whether it is right that they exist.

The Hungarian Prime Minister added that they are in contact with the Hungarian minority in Slovakia, "and we will see whether we need to take action." Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó also commented on the law while in Brussels, according to Magyar Hang: he said that the government would use all means at its disposal to ensure that Hungarians in Slovakia were not adversely affected, and that they were in constant consultation with the Slovak government about the law. According to him, his Slovak colleagues assured him that the “regulation is not directed against the Hungarian ethnic community”

Péter Magyar, president of the Tisza Party, posted on Facebook that "While Viktor Orbán is playing the patriot, he has actually abandoned our fellow Hungarians living in Slovakia." According to Magyar, the Prime Minister first abandoned the Hungarians in Transylvania and now the Hungarians in Slovakia.

A week ago, Slovakia passed a law that provides for a six-month prison sentence for anyone who questions the Beneš Decrees. The Beneš Decrees were issued after World War II, when the Czechoslovak state applied the principle of collective guilt to the Hungarian and German inhabitants living within its territory, in many cases depriving them of their property, possessions, and homes. The decrees, which were elevated to the status of law remain an unshakeable foundation of the Czech and Slovak systems of government to this day, despite the fact that they would not stand up to scrutiny under human rights standards.

The subject of the Beneš decrees came to the forefront of Slovak politics recently after the popular opposition party, Progressive Slovakia (Progresívne Slovensko, PS) called attention to the issue. They called on the government to resolve the issue of land confiscations that had taken place in recent years. "The government wants to put me, President Pellegrini, and thousands of other people—especially Hungarians living in Slovakia—in prison," said Michal Šimečka, president of PS, in response to the government coalition's proposal.

The reason why the topic has resurfaced is because of the expropriations that took place in the 2010s prior to the construction of a motorway. Before the construction of the new southern and eastern sectors of the Bratislava ring road, the motorway company started buying up the affected plots of land and has tried to settle the ownership issues. "The Slovak Land Fund then came up with an initiative suggesting that there was no need for the state to pay for the plots," because of the confiscation decisions from the 1940s. In many cases, the heirs of the original owners were the ones using these plots, which they reclaimed later, after the system change.