Carta, Romania, March 15 (AFP/APP): In the village of Carta, deep in Romania’s Transylvania region, the fruits of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s generosity towards the country’s Hungarian ethnic minority are plain to see.
Attila Nagy walks proudly along the hallways of the modern medical centre he manages, part of the ice hockey academy built in Carta with money from the Hungarian government. The complex also boasts an ice skating rink and a hotel, and is overseen by the Mens Sana foundation, a Romanian NGO which receives funding from Budapest.
Of the 10 million euros ($11.9 million) Mens Sana spent on the centre, 90 percent came from Hungarian taxpayers. Since he returned to power in 2010, Orban has pumped millions of euros through grants and NGOs towards Hungarian communities in Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Ukraine, with the influx of money increasing after 2016.
More than 250 million euros have so far reached Hungarian communities in Romania alone. The cash has flowed to schools, stadiums and small factories across Transylvania, home to most of Romania’s 1.2 million ethnic Hungarians — over six percent of the country’s population.
The money has created a loyal voter bloc for Orban’s Fidesz party, with 96 percent of diaspora Hungarians voting for the party in 2018 elections. But the largesse has irked the Romanian government.
The foreign ministry said recently that “granting economic aid goes beyond the sphere of preferential treatment that a state can offer to a minority living in another country”. On a visit to Bucharest last month, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto ruled out any change of course.
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