Hungary's Jobbik to seek end to Trianon borders, Benes Decrees

June 15, 2009

ABOUT 800 people attended a commemoration of the 1920 Trianon treaty organised in a square near Budapest's City Park by the Sixty-Four Counties Youth Movement on Saturday afternoon with the participants including around 250 members of the paramilitary Hungarian Guard.

Addressing the gathering, newly elected Jobbik, Movement for a Better Hungary, MEP Csanad Szegedi said that the party plans to fight for the toppling of borders set by the 1920 Trianon treaty and the abolition of the post-WWII Benes Decrees. Jobbik wants 2010 to become the year of Trianon, Szegedi said.

Jobbik considers it one of its main targets that "the Trianon borders should be dropped within a few generations or as soon as possible," Szegedi said.

The three elected Jobbik MEPs in Brussels will initially demand the abolition of the Benes decrees on the expulsion of Germans and Hungarians from Czechoslovakia after WW2, Szegedi said, adding that German and Austrian MEPs will be invited to work towards the abolition of the decrees.

The decrees issued by Czechoslovak president President Edvard Benes in 1945 provided for the confiscation of the property of collaborators, traitors, ethnic Germans and Hungarians, except for those who themselves suffered under the Nazis. They also formed a basis for the transfer of the former groups from Czechoslovakia after WWII.

Jobbik will demand territorial autonomy for Szekler land in Romania and will also press for Transcarpathia in Ukraine to become an independent Hungarian district, Szegedi said.

The group marched from the square to the Slovak, Romanian and Serbian embassies, carrying banners with the text "Justice for Hungary!" and "Down with Trianon!"

Police told the Hungarian Press Agency MTI that the event had ended without any disturbances or police action.

The Trianon Treaty was signed by representatives of the Allies of WWI and Hungary on June 4th, 1920. Under the treaty, Hungary's territory was cut from nearly 283,000 square kilometres to 93,000, and its population dropped from 18 million to 7.6 million.