In 1910 half the population of Hungary had a first language other than Hungarian. This ratio declined to 5–8 per cent after the Treaty of Trianon, the First World War settlement which led to Hungary losing two thirds of her territory, and with it one third of the ethnic Hungarian population. The largest national minority in post-1920 Hungary were the Germans. The German population, which had considerably grown through immigration in the 18th century, approached half a million. They lived in Western Hungary, centred on Sopron (Oedenburg), in villages in the environs of Budapest and the Bakony hills, and in Danube riparian Southern Hungary. In the mid-19th century, Buda and Pest were still reckoned to be German towns, both burghers and industrial workers being predominantly Germans. Fin-de-sičcle development and population growth (including many Slovak immigrants, who did not maintain their identity in the second generation) meant that Budapest lost its German character. Like some other East and Central European countries, between 1945 and 1947 Hungary expelled its Germans, some 260,000 in all.

Many Slovaks also migrated to the present territory of Hungary, but they were soon largely Magyarized. In 1920 close to half a million claimed to be able to speak Slovak, but only 150,000 indicated Slovak as their first language. Between the wars most Slovaks lived in County Békés, but also in villages along the northern frontier. Post-1945 population exchanges between Czechoslovakia and Hungary meant that 70,000 Slovaks crossed the frontier.

Of other minorities, few of their number remained in the present territory of the country. There used to be more than two million Romanians, in post-Trianon Hungary this number had shrunk to a few thousand; this was true of the South Slavs as well. The Serbs, moving north as the Turks advanced, settled in just about every Danube riparian town and village, forming a majority in many. A greater number of Croats settled along the southern frontier and in a number of villages in western Hungary. There are a few Slovene villages in County Vas, and Ruthenes and Ukrainians in a village or two in northern Hungary. The greater part of Poles are Second World War refugees who settled here, or are their descendants. Armenians are divided between those who settled in Transylvania in the 17th century, and those who fled the massacres in Turkey early this century. Greek merchants have long been settled in Hungarian towns, the present small Greek community, however, are Communist refugees from the Greek Civil War and their descendants.

The largest minority are the Gypsies. They first appeared in Hungary late in the 14th century, and have been moving in steadily from the Balkans ever since. Some speak Hungarian, some Roma, and some a dialect of Romanian. Gypsies are found just about everywhere in Hungary, but mainly in Budapest, North Eastern Hungary and County Baranya.

[...]

The Act recognizes thirteen minorities as empowered to establish minority self-governments. Special provisions facilitate the creation of these bodies. For example, to nominate a candidate it suffices to put forward 5 persons professing affiliation to a particular minority group, without offering evidence of minority identity by membership in any minority organization or association. For inclusion on the ballot paper, a candidate needs to be nominated by only 5 constituents.

The Act also sets the threshold for valid election very low: for a municipality with a population under 10,000, no more than 50 (elsewhere 100) votes are needed, and all voters are entitled to vote for the minority list. This latter concession is disputed by a number of—mainly Gypsy—minority politicians, who argue that minority self-governments are not being elected by those immediately concerned; on the other hand, all the national minorities refuse to participate in compiling a separate "verified" national minority electoral register. For communities numbering only a few thousand, the current practice is acceptable; for instance, the nearly five-thousand-strong ethnic Serb minority (the figure includes minors) attracted 16,000 votes in the 1994 elections, and Greek or Armenian self-governments would probably not even have come into existence had there not been "sympathy" votes. In municipalities with a population numbering less than 1,300, the representative bodies of minority self-governments may comprise at most 3, in other places a maximum of 5, individuals (even in towns with a population of a hundred thousand, where the duties of a representative are likely to be more taxing). According to data published by the Office for National and Ethnic Minorities (NEKH), 738 ethnic municipal authorities were functioning of the 817 created during the 1994 and 1995 local government elections. In the autumn 1998 local government elections, 1364 minority self-governments were created. Certain individuals, however, clearly took advantage of the electoral law to make a mockery of the system. Jenő Kaltenbach, the Minority Ombudsman, initiated an investigation stating that "a number of complaints have reached us concerning the minority elections and for this reason we have decided to launch a general investigation regarding the issue." (One of those who appealed to the Ombudsman was Tosho Donchev, the President of NEKH.)

The Ombudsman was trying to discover how non-minority candidates in a number of municipalities came to run in the colours of the ethnic minorities; some of them even successfully driving out locally well-known minority representatives. The national leadership of ethnic Greeks in Hungary had learned from the experience of the previous elections, when a Greek minority self-government was established in the Ferencváros district of Budapest that had absolutely no contact with the Greek community in Hungary; accordingly they began organizing and selecting their candidates in good time. To no avail, as they were unable to prevent the nomination of self-styled candidates, some members of the Greek community standing as independents and, as in the case of the self-styled candidates, the only way they could be identified was through their family name. It is characteristic of the chaos that Ferenc Sárközi, one of the candidates in Újpest for the Greek self-government, "confessed" to his Gypsy identity by standing as a Roma candidate in another district. (Since he could be a member of minority self-government only in one constituency, he withdrew his Gypsy candidacy, but failed to secure enough votes as a Greek.)

A candidate from one of the Roma organizations, called Rom Som, was better acquainted with the electoral law; he did not enter the minority elections in various guises, but reserved one of his identities for the regional self-government elections. Thus, József Abházi, who ran as a candidate in Rom Som colours in the 5th district of Budapest, became a self-government deputy in the 15th district—as a German candidate on the compensation list. Rom Som had candidates who also tried their luck either as Greeks or Armenians.

Strange results also surfaced in the village of Pomáz near Budapest. Sándor Erdélyi became a member of the German minority self-government; in the municipal self-government—to which he was elected via the minority compensation list—he represents the Slovene minority. József Czink, the notary of Pomáz, remarked "until now I was unaware that Slovenes lived in the municipality." Representing the Slovaks in Pomáz, Erzsébet Csabai became a member of the Pomáz governing body, despite running as a German in the minority self-government elections. The most striking case was that of the Romanian minority in Hungary, a case the Ombudsman specially investigated. The Hungarian-Romanian Democratic Federation (MRDSZ), formed just before the elections, scored a sweeping victory in the minority self-government elections in the autumn of 1998. According to the leaders of the long-standing Romanian Cultural Society of Budapest (BRKT) its members "up to this time had never appeared at any Romanian social or cultural function." BRKT fielded candidates in the minority self-government elections purely because they observed that civil minority associations are now being allotted less and less money by the local authorities. They would have liked to form self-governments in three districts; they found however, that in 15 districts candidates were running in Romanian colours. Thus, the MRDSZ gained 58 minority self-government deputies.

The BRKT and the National Self-Government of Romanians of Hungary turned to several authorities "in order to pre-empt further consequences of the humiliation of our community". The Ombudsman replied that "I am not in a position to take legal action in this respect," at the same time he found the situation absurd. He also noted that the dispute made "the whole purpose of the minority self-government system questionable." The MRDSZ succeeded in preventing the constitution of a national federation of Romanian self-governments in Hungary, since the election meeting lacked a quorum. Due to the high quorum imposed—a minimum of 75 per cent of those elected locally had to participate—MRDSZ candidates (who accounted for 40 per cent of the total) were thus able to prevent the creation of the national federation. (The leader of the MRDSZ, Zoltán Papp, who had, for four years, been president of the Gypsy minority self-government in one of the Budapest districts, was willing to form an election alliance with former representatives of Romanians in Hungary but his offer was rebuffed.) Tosho Donchev, the NEKH President, also turned to the Ombudsman, signalling that the current legal framework makes it impossible for the administration to exclude cases similar to those of the Romanians.

National Minorities	According to	According to
in Hungary	first language*	ethnic allegiance**
Gypsy	48,072	400,000=600,000
German	37,511	200,000=220,000
Croat	17,577	80,000=90,0000
Slovak	12,745	100,000=110,000
Romanian	8,730	25,000
Polish	3,788	10,000
Serb	2,953	5,000
Slovene	2,627	5,000
Greek	1,640	5,000
Bulgarian	1,370	3,500
Ukrainian and Ruthenian	674	2,000
Armenian	37	5,000
Total	137,724	840,000 – 1,080,000

* estimates
** estimate of minority organizations

[...]

Normative state support together with the financial assistance provided by municipal self-governments do not exceed half a million forints for 65 per cent of the minority self-governments. Three-fifths of this goes into operational costs; on an average no more than 14 per cent remains for cultural programmes and 12 per cent for education. For the purpose of the latter, self-governments are attempting to tap other sources and around a quarter of them managed to collect over half a million forints last year. Many sources are unavailable since the regulations of various foundations require that those receiving help contribute some of their own money. This, however, few are able or prepared to do. Of the minority leaders concerned, several argue that local conditions determine minority self-government activity to such a degree that it does not make sense to talk about a system of self-governments. The relevant statutory provisions stipulate, for example, that they may calculate their budget or use their assets solely within the framework defined by municipal self-government regulations—in other words, their financial dependence is virtually complete. There are municipalities where minority self-governments are viewed purely as one of the many civil organizations and are given a pittance; on the other hand, there are municipalities which provide an amount of support to each minority self-government that puts to shame what the national self-governments receive. Nearly one-third of village minority self-governments would be content with a mere half a million forints annual support, the majority would like to receive between 1 and 2 million, and only 6 per cent ask for a sum in excess of 3 million. At the same time, 45 per cent of existing minority self-governments in municipalities with inhabitants numbering over 50,000 lay claim to more than 3 million. There is no obvious correlation between local assistance provided for minorities and the size of the minority in the municipality.

In a number of respects, the source of conflicts is the lack of clarity over principles dividing the sphere of responsibilities between municipal and minority self-governments. To a large extent it depends on the municipality, what kind of duties are delegated to its "little brother". Though the law empowers minorities to participate in municipal self-government assemblies, it is determined locally whether they are or are not included in decision-making. It is rare to find a place like the 3rd district of Budapest, where minority deputies have even been granted voting rights in three committees. In many places, alluding to bad past experience, they are cautious about granting "too many" rights to minority self-government members. In more than one place members of the Gypsy self-government—stressing their minority rights—wanted to intervene, for example, in the distribution of municipal aid funds. Ferenc Hranek, chairman of the Gypsy self-government in the northern Hungarian industrial city of Salgótarján considers it a success that their proposed method of distributing social aid was taken into account. Some money was reallocated at their suggestion to local schools to feed needy Gypsy children; they also succeeded in dissuading the authorities from evicting nearly a hundred Gypsy families. "During the debate we did not defend the Gypsies in general terms, but offered constructive proposals aimed at resolving the issue. For instance, we asked for a deferred payment scheme for those in debt, as well as for smaller homes they can afford to maintain", said Ferenc Hranek, adding, "we were also in agreement with the eviction of five families." Indeed, the Salgótarján self-government has provided separate offices for Gypsy representatives, who this year—although they considered the central state support a bit tight—did not ask for financial assistance from an overburdened municipality. On the other hand, in other places municipal leaders endeavour to reject such "interventionist" attempts, hence the activities of minority self-governments are practically exhausted by staging a few tradition-saving functions and, perhaps, the management of the occasional school minority-language class.