Xpat Opinion: Hungary - A Decade In The European Union
- 5 May 2014 9:00 AM
Ten years ago, May 1, 2004 – following a referendum April 12, 2003 in which 84 percent of voters expressed their support for accession – Hungary joined the European Union along with nine other former Soviet bloc countries. Hungary had established diplomatic relations with the European Community (predecessor to the EU) in 1988, the first country in the region to do so, then submitted its membership application in 1994. Formal negotiations began in 1998 under the first Orbán Government.
Even “the rifts created by two World Wars and the Cold War were not deep enough to be truly insurmountable,” write the foreign ministers of the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia on the occasion of this tenth anniversary. It’s reinforced by “unshakeable unity,” say the ministers. For Hungary, EU accession was a homecoming, reintegrating with the European family after the change of the regime and becoming free of Soviet communist rule. We have our debates and disagreements with our European friends, but one of the key messages of the April 6 election results was, as Prime Minister Orbán said that night, that Hungarians voted once again in favor of the EU.
Twenty-five years after the defeat of communism and ten years after joining the EU, Hungarians now take it for granted that we can travel, work, trade and invest freely across the continent, a freedom that many of us awaited with great anticipation. Celebrating ten years, we look forward in this spirit to electing our representatives in the European Parliament at the end of May.
By Ferenc Kumin
Source: A Blog About Hungary
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