Komárno/Komárom Grand Assembly in 1994
The biggest community and political achievement of Hungarians living in independent Slovakia since 1993 was the “National Grand Assembly of Elected Hungarian Representatives and Mayors in Slovakia”, which took place in Komárno/Komárom on 8 January 1994.
The Grand Assembly was hosted by the Association of Towns and Municipalities of the Žitný ostrov/Csallóköz Region, who’s Chairman was the Mayor of Komárno/Komárom, István Pásztor. The political background and the national mobilisation of the event was provided by the Political Movement of Coexistence/Spolužitie/Együttélés and the Hungarian Christian Democratic Movement. Duray Miklós, Chairman of the Együttélés Political Movement, was the main intellectual leader and organizer of the Grand Assembly.
The minutes of the Komárom Grand Assembly contain the resolutions of the more than 3,000 Hungarian mayors, municipal and parliamentary representatives with public legitimacy in Slovakia, which set out the vision of the Hungarian community in Slovakia for its future in four important areas. These four parts – political, municipal, administrative and constitutional – form a unity in which “the minimum goals were set by the political forces present in southern Slovakia on the basis of a common social consensus.” The resolution was a declaration of the will of the community for self-determination and self-government.
The resolution adopted by the Grand Assembly stated, “The part of the Hungarian nation that has been living on the territory of the present-day Slovak state for more than a thousand years as an autochthonous people defines itself as a national community, with the fundamental right of cultural self-determination and self-determination within the framework of the existing state.”
In terms of language rights, it stated that “the Hungarians, in all areas inhabited by at least 10% of the population, shall have the right to use the language and to be bilingual in public areas, and in the areas inhabited by a majority of Hungarians, Hungarian shall be the official language together with Slovak” – the language law in force at the time defined Slovak as the official language and not the state language.
The political message of the resolution is the most serious: “Hungarians in the Slovak Republic wish to live as a community on an equal footing with Slovaks and the regions inhabited by a significant number of Hungarians should be granted special status.” The participants of the Grand Assembly clearly supported the administrative-territorial reorganisation of Slovakia, rejecting the solution of dividing the region inhabited by Hungarians between five large administrative regions. They also called for the strengthening of local self-government, the extension of its powers and the establishment of a system of regional self-government. They advocated the creation of a regional self-government for the Hungarian-inhabited area, which they adopted two ways of establishing: ‘to consider the Hungarian-inhabited area as a coherent administrative and self-governing area’, and ‘to establish a regional self-government for the Hungarian-inhabited area’.