Ukraine’s parliament approved legislation expanding minority-language education rights on Monday, 12 October, with 266 lawmakers voting in favour, marking a breakthrough for ethnic Hungarians in Transcarpathia and clearing a longstanding obstacle to Kyiv’s European Union accession bid.
The amendments strengthen the right to use Hungarian alongside Ukrainian in classrooms and official school communications, provide special legal status for schools where a majority of pupils study in an eligible minority language, and introduce protections against their closure. Ukrainian remains the state language of education, while the additional guarantees apply to indigenous languages and minority languages officially recognized by the EU.
The vote is particularly significant for Hungary, as it directly addressed a long-running dispute between Budapest and Kyiv over Ukraine’s 2017 education reform, which restricted the use of minority languages in education. Former foreign minister Péter Szijjártó presented Kyiv with an eleven-point list of minority-rights demands in 2024, saying Hungary would support Ukraine’s EU accession bid only if restoring the rights of Transcarpathian Hungarians.
After the 12 April election, negotiations continued under Prime Minister Péter Magyar, whose government reached an agreement with Ukraine in June but insisted that the necessary legislation be adopted before allowing further progress on EU accession.
The newly approved proposal received support from Transcarpathia’s two main Hungarian organizations. In a joint statement on 2 October, the Cultural Alliance of Hungarians in Sub-Carpathia (KMKSZ) and the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Ukraine (UMDSZ) said it offered substantial protection for Hungarian-language schools and urged parliament to adopt it without dilution.
Prime Minister Magyar welcomed Monday’s result while speaking during a parliamentary session, attacking the former Orbán government’s record. Turning towards Fidesz MPs, he declared that Foreign Minister Anita Orbán had achieved ‘a hundred times more’ in three weeks than they had in years. He nevertheless acknowledged that restoring trust between the two countries would require further work.
Fidesz had warned before the vote, in a 3 October statement, that Kyiv was seeking primarily to lift Hungary’s veto rather than genuinely restore minority rights, arguing that Budapest had received insufficient guarantees regarding adoption and enforcement. Monday’s passage resolves the adoption issue, although practical implementation remains to be tested.
Anita Orbán has pledged to monitor the law’s implementation alongside minority representatives. The measure now awaits President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s signature, while Ukraine expects the EU to open two additional negotiating clusters on Tuesday, 13 October.
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