As we reported last week following an interview with Hungary’s foreign minister, the government in Budapest appears to be willing to diffuse the dust-up over its controversial media law, which critics charge is intended to stifle press opposition.
In a letter sent to the European Commission Monday, and posted by our colleagues at the Hungarian daily Nepszabadsag, Hungary’s deputy prime minister and justice minister Tibor Navracsics said his government was willing to amend the law, if the Commission deemed it necessary. (English translation of letter here.)
My half-hour interview with Janos Martonyi wasn’t all about the media law, however. We talked about his desire to see Friday’s summit of EU heads of government focus on energy issues – as originally planned – and not get overshadowed by the ongoing eurozone debt crisis.
And we also talked about The Carpet.
For those who haven’t been following the saga, to kick off their six-month stint in the EU’s rotating presidency, Hungary last month unveiled a football pitch-sized carpet in the building used for EU summits that includes, smack dab in the middle, a map of Hungary from 1848 – when parts of current-day Slovakia and Romania were within Hungarian borders.
The map has caused a bit of a ruckus, particularly since it comes after the government of prime minister Viktor Orban passed a law allowing Hungarian minorities in Slovakia and Romania to acquire Hungarian passports. Martin Schulz, the German MEP who heads the Socialists in the European Parliament, took Orban to task over the carpet during the prime minister’s tumultuous visit to Strasbourg in January.
But in my interview, Martonyi was pretty dismissive of those concerns. “Are we really normal in present Europe?” he asked. “There must be a limit to this sensitivity.”
Martonyi described the carpet, which includes other images from Hungarian history, as “an expression of revolutionary ideas”, noting that in 1848, Hungary was attempting to gain independence from its Hapsburg overlords.
But he also insisted that critics of Hungary were having it both ways, expressing outrage over the new media law’s restrictions…but then calling on Hungary to “censor” the carpet, which was designed by a Hungarian artist.
“After all this discussion about legislation and regulation, would you expect us to introduce legislation prohibiting all historic maps, for 1000 years?” he asked. “Then I have to [back laws to] prohibit [maps]. From now on, all the maps prior to 1920 are prohibited. Is that serious? Are we really normal about that?”
It goes without saying that Hungary’s borders remain a sore point domestically. Hungary was arguably the biggest loser when the map of Europe was redrawn following World War I, and Orban’s government has made June 4 – the day the 1920 Treaty of Trianon was signed, stripping Hungary of about two-thirds of its territory - a “day of national remembrance”.
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