Country home to at least 10 officially recognised minorities

HUNGARY has at least 10 officially recognised minorities, an inheritance from all the movements of their border down through the centuries. While most of them are there for generations and speak Hungarian better than their grandparents’ language, they still retain an interest in their own culture and music. As a result, the Hungarian State helps fund weekly half-hour television programmes and many have newspapers in their own language, too.

The biggest and the only growing minority are the Roma gypsies. Laszlo Matay, a journalist with Hungarian TV produces the programmes and says the EU provides funding for the Roma. "But they are a different issue, less educated, high unemployment and less integrated." Unlike Ireland's Travellers, the Roma were forced to settle about 200 years ago and make up a massive 8% or about 800,000 of the population. Everyone agrees they are a problem and the situation has got worse since independence. While locals are slow to admit it, those on the outside say the Roma are victims of a type of apartheid in Hungary and also in several other countries they are found, including the Czech Republic and Romania. Their culture militates against them big families, high unemployment, and their daughters are traditionally married off at 15. Their education suffers because children are often kept at home, while they are also divided off into special classes and schools where standards are low.

During Soviet times, everyone had to have a job, but this is not the case any longer. Many of the Roma's traditional pursuits are dying off, such as tinsmithing. Now many feel they cannot afford to work, because with large families, they get more money from social welfare payments.