Reconciliation as the key towards a prosperous future Efforts and possibilities in my home country Im from Hungary and I have

e worked with the minority groups living in Hungary. This cooperation was a 9 years period and a fruitful collaboration to maintain and promote the minoritys cultures, everyday life, and for passing the cultural heritage to next generations. In Hungary there are 13 groups of minorities which are declared in the law as minorities (accepted by the Hungarian Parliament, in 2011.). This is the basic document which contains the rights and the obligations of the minority communities. They have the right to self-determination by establishing local minority governments based by vote and by founding civil organizations. They are accessible to have financial support by the government or by local municipalities, or by their members. The question of the minority presence in the national parliament is a question since many years, but the organizations of the dialogues presented no results yet. If we see the European Unions messages, such as multiculturalism, tolerance, minority rights, coexistence and cooperation, we can consider that focusing on the minority question is always actual. Between our minority communities there are some whose have a mother country being a Member State in the EU, and some, whose mother country is in candidate status. The Hungarian neighborhood policy has the fundamental question to protect the Hungarian minority living abroad, but I think the governments do not use the inside minority policy well at reaching this goal and to protect the minority communities living in Hungary. As I have worked so many years with the minority communities, I know their cultural characteristics, point of view to the majority community, the bilingualism, and the traditions. In our Public Foundation we had a meeting in every month to decide the projects, their aim and the financial background, the deadline, the control mechanism to observe the processes, etc. We did not have much money but we decided to cooperate and establish a sustainable system to support every project. The monthly event had another dimension too, this was the possibility to create long term plans and to react to the national politics, and to take the chance and the tools influence it. During the non official part of this meeting the minority communities

used their own languages between them and for example the Slav nations, the Serbs, the Croatians, the Slovenians could use a common language. The common work has permitted me to know this rich world and has given a large comprehension and sensibility. We organized the Arcusfest Theater Festival in Budapest together. I take this example because this was the most visible event of our cooperation. All the 13 communities had the possibilities to represent their culture by professional and/or amateur theater groups during the one week festival. We invited the politicians and the ambassadors to view the spectacles and to get to know each other. Typically the number of the Hungarian politicians participating in the event was less than the number of the ambassadors. I consider that an event like this one is a good ground to have a non-formal possibility to reinforce the existing cooperation or to create new ones. During the preparation period we checked the theater groups, we offered financial support to them. The curators worked in the organization staff too, we sent the invitation letters, rented the Thalia and the Puppet Theaters. We sold the 9095% of the tickets, so this was always a fruitful event. After the spectacles we ate together and discussed the plays, and the question was not to know the persons name who was speaking, but the nationality. The possibilities of the cooperation in the neighborhood policy The acceptance of the Hungarian minority living abroad is very often difficult for the nation which they live together with. If we take a look at the Slovakian or the Serbian situation, we consider that the violent atrocities exist and there is a huge intolerance to the minority community. This intolerance exists to the other minorities as well. In Hungary there is a difference between the acceptance and the refuse of the minority groups. We have preferred minorities like Germans or Polishes, Croatians, and dislikes ones like Romanians, Slovaks or Gypsies. But the majority of our society does not know the language, the literature, the dishes, etc. I decided to learn the Croatian language, just for it is a pleasure for me and I have the chance to understand the Croatian point of view when I use their language in spite of I do not speak Croatian well.

I worked with Gypsies and nine other minority communities, when I was the president of the Committee on Human Rights, Minorities, Non-governmental Organizations and Ecclesiastical Affaires from 2006 to 2010. We organized common projects and the most visible were the different cultural festivals when we had the chance to involve the others to know the minorities, the Gypsies and to participate in our activities. In the first time we organized these events in a cultural house, but I have changed this method, and I decided to use the common places, parks, streets, to open to the people who were not part of the minority groups and because of this reason they did not want to participate in the events existing in the cultural house. Sometimes the majority believes that the financial support for these communities will be something that is lack of the budget of the majority. But that is not true. The main problem is the locking habit and the lack of the will to know another people. But if the majority of for example the Serbian people can see that the Serbs have the financial and the moral support in Hungary to protect their culture, language, they can be able to accept the Hungarians also. Keep in mind that the positive cooperation is not interesting enough for the media and the violence is showed by them in the most of the cases. I think if we use a transparent system to support the minority communities and we give the non minority people a chance to benefit from participating in the activities, we can establish reconciliation. I do not think if this reconciliation is only the task of the politicians who can be planning for relatively short term, but the NGOs can be involved too. For example if the community of a village, where Hungarians and Serbs live, can be able to find a common aim, as creating a park or something similar, they have to share ideas and the knowledge and the tasks, and if they start to speak, a moment is arrive when the others perspectives can be important. This is the starting point of the reconciliation. I think in the neighborhood policy the governments have to play a frame role, and this method can be avoid the choice between this or that direction, but the augmentation of the NGOs role can be attractive. An NGO can be involving more people in the common activities than a political party.

There is a huge problem; this is forgiving the old abuses. For us, for example, the Trianon treaty is one of these abuses. For the others, they have their own memory. The people think, that forgiving is a weakness, and something treacherous. We have to keep in our mind all of our grieves? Absolutely no. If we forgive the others, we will become stronger than before. This is a hard decision. But after forgiving, we will know what happened in the past. We will need time and the will to learn by the historical fact and not continue to destroy each others, we do not need another war, economical difficulties, but a prosperous present and future. After forgiving we have the real chance to make good decisions. The possibilities of the cooperation in the European policy The cooperation in the European affairs demands the knowledge of each other. The capacity of our interests requires the common appearance in the European stage. If we do not know our history, the common characteristics and the differences, we can not cooperate and we will not succeed. But if we accept our nations and we focus on the respect and reconciliation, we can create a fruitful area to have a common voice to the European community and help each other to reach our own interests. We are now the new Member States that the western part of Europe does not know well enough, so that is one of the main reasons of the decisions made by Brussels. We, sometimes, have debates on the European stage and we do not show our capacity to cooperate. This is the time to show that we are not only the post soviet states or the community of the poor people which demand a lot of money and give back nothing. We have a rich cultural heritage, habits, and the persistence living under foreign regime and the braveness to survive in it, and preserve our nationality. In the violent period of the history we can be able to support each other. The present is a hard period for us, on one hand to survive the economic crisis and on other hand to keep us as respectful nations and communicate with the others who do not know us well. We have to cooperate constantly and to create stable and viable alliances to be successful. The cultural policy of the EU supports the

international project to reinforce the common work in different areas. The first step can be the culture as the way of the approach. Some of Central and Eastern European countries are Member States but they can not have the access to be inside of the Schengen System. One of these countries is our neighbor, Romania. When there is a Hungarian minority too, excluding with the Romanians. They can not have a permission to work for example. So we have to help them to have inside the Schengen System and have all the benefits we have since the adhesion. In the case of Slovakia, we have the Danube as a border. The Danube can be a river which separate two countries but in the European field we can manage the Danube as a common topic, as keeping its richness, its cleanness, etc. I think we can find other common topics too. The larger field of the cooperation can be the reinforced Visegrad Group. Within that we can cooperate with the Slovakians, the Czechs and our friends, the Polish. This reinforced cooperation could be the best practice for the countries of the ex-Yugoslavia. We have a very good cooperation with Croatia and Slovenia too. If we keep this ambiance, we can help the other countries of the Balkan to join to the European Union. If we decide to choose the reconciliation, we can become a good example not only for the Central European people, but the Western Europeans too. We know there's are a lot of tension between the minority communities there too. And they did not live under a totalitarian regime for about 50 years. I do not say that in the western part the existing problems are less important, but maybe we can find the remedy for the minority problems. I am sure that we have to find very practical solutions for the cooperation in the first steps like the keep the Danube clean or the organizing of cultural festivals, because in the practical every days the dialogue can be form.