"Serbia has very good relations with Hungary, that is why negotiations are all it can offer Bratislava in regard to dual citizenship." Slovakian leadership could hardly believe their ears when they heard these words from the mouth of Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremics, who visited Bratislava at the beginning of the month.

The dismaying recognition that the cooperation of two Slav nations - which was based on anti-Hungarian sentiments - has now ended, resulted in such absurd statements in Bratislava as the one made by Slovakian Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajčák: "Any kind of alliance between Serbia and Hungary, against Slovakia, is unacceptable to Bratislava."

And yet the Slovakian leadership should have noticed that Belgrade was not going to abide by Slovakian nationalism. János Martonyi was still foreign minister-designate when he consulted with his Serbian colleague in Budapest, in mid-May, just one day before his visit to Bratislava. "Because of the Serbian communities that have found themselves outside the country's borders ever since the disintegration of Yugoslavia, it has not been in the interest of Serbia to object to the Hungarian bill regarding dual citizenship," said the head of Serbian diplomacy in Belgrade prior to his visits to Budapest and Bratislava.

Almost all Serbians living in Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Macedonia have adopted the citizenship of their homeland, that is why the Serbian press has taken no notice of Slovakian fears concerning territorial loss and the supposed Hungarian endeavour to have the Treaty of Trianon revised.

"The Hungarian citizenship law should be just as unacceptable for Serbia, Romania and Ukraine as it is for us. And yet these states haven't protested against it yet," said former prime minister, the Christian-Democratic politician, Ján Čarnogurský. In his view, dealing with the Hungarian situation is not primarily about Viktor Orbán.  The greatest danger to Slovakia at the moment is international seclusion. That is why Čarnogurský thinks Fico should have initiated talks with the Serbian, Romanian and Ukranian foreign ministers, and not with his Hungarian partner.

Meanwhile, the Romanian leadership acts as if the Hungarian-Slovakian differences (of opinion) didn't even exist, and they had never even heard of the idea of dual citizenship. Titus Corlăţean, chairman of the foreign committee of the Romanian senate, criticized the Romanian head of state and the government for not having reacted to developments in Hungary, pointing out that silence is a form of consent. Under-secretary of state for foreign affairs, Niculescu Toni, declared that Bucharest should not be expected to take a stand on this issue later on, either.

The reason for Romania's abstention is that Bucharest has been granting citizenship - with accelerated procedures - to those living in neighbouring Moldova - which is outside the European Union - for years now. The population there speaks Romanian, the national colours are the same, which is why they don't really consider the Moldavians as an independent nation in Bucharest. So much so that Romania seizes every opportunity to protest in Brussels when an EU document is to be translated into Moldovan.

Following the unrests last April in Chişinău, the issuing of Romanian citizenship was made even easier. There is no data concerning the exact number of Moldavian Romanian citizens, but Romanian president Traian Băsescu's statement of last year tells us a lot: he said that at the Romanian embassy in Chişinău, there were 650 thousand envelopes, containing the requests for Romanian citizenship of one million people, and the population of Moldova is four million.

Things have changed in Ukraine, too, although the law there still regards the notion of dual citizenship negatively. However, after the presidential elections this year, it was Viktor Janukovich that came to power. He was the candidate of the Russian population, which represents almost 20 percent of the country's 48 million inhabitants, and he can't speak the national language correctly. As for the prime minister, Nikolai Azarov, before a cabinet meeting he reads out a statement in Ukranian from a piece of paper, then starts speaking in Russian.

The new Ukranian administration goes against the Ukranian nationalistic politics of its predecessor, so now it is possible once again to take the secondary school final exam in Hungarian, school textbooks are being printed in Hungarian once more.  What's more, the recognition of minority languages in the ethnic territories has been submitted to parliament. As a consequence, similar to Vojvodina in Serbia, Carpathian Ruthenia may become a territory with several official languages, where the Hungarian community - with a population of 150 thousand - may now have a much better chance of organising itself than it did earlier.

When Kosovo became independent in 2008, the one-time Little Entente "joined forces", the Serbian, Slovakian and Romanian leaders met frequently, and statements condemning the Albanians of Kosovo were not at all unusual. These three countries did not recognize the independence of the former Serbian province, and they agreed to fight against all kinds of phenomena that ensured self-government to an ethnic minority. This kind of cooperation was never problematic in the past.

Before the adoption of the status law in 2001, Hungarian diplomacy tried to negotiate with the neighbouring countries, and this resulted in some remarkable moments. "On several occasions during the talks, Slovakian Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar asked for a short break, went into the other room, and when he came back, he echoed Bucharest's standpoint in quite an apparent manner. It was as if he had called the Romanian president, Ion Iliescu, during the break and asked him to list arguments against the Hungarian standpoint," one of our diplomatic sources told us.

Bratislava failed to notice that the environment surrounding it had changed rapidly, and all of a sudden. During the election campaign, Fico and company had lashed out against Fidesz' supposed nationalism, and they hadn't noticed Budapest's change of tone either, when on his first visit abroad, Viktor Orbán had travelled to Warsaw. "Strengthening Central European cooperation is of strategic importance to Hungary, and within this, Polish-Hungarian relations are of primary importance," so reads the Budapest statement.

 The fact that ties between Hungary and Poland will become a lot stronger is something that will significantly affect the whole region, and which Bratislava will not be able to simply disregard.

A Central-Right victory in Slovakia

Despite the fact that Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico's party, Smer-SD (Direction - Socialdemocracy) won last Saturday's elections, the 35% of votes that they got, and their 62 representatives, are not enough to form a government in the 150-member legislative body, for they won't have any allies.

One of their coalition partners, the People's Party - Movement for a Democratic Slovakia, led by Vladimír Meciar, is no longer in parliament, and their other partner, the extremist Ján Slota's Slovak National Party, with a mere 5.09 percent of the votes, just reached the threshold.

As for the four opposition parties - centrist-right and liberal - they had declared before the elections that they would not enter a coalition with Smer. The four parties have 78 representatives altogether. The Slovakian Christian-Democratic Union - Democratic Party, led by Iveta Radicova, is at the top of the list with 15.32% of the votes, the liberal Freedom and Solidarity has 12.12%, the Christian-Democratic Movement has 8.54%, the Hungarian- Slovakian Bridge - Now (Híd - Most) has 8.12%. Thus, it will probably be this foursome that will form a government, led by Radicova.

In a recent report, the Hungarian-language paper Felvidék Ma wrote that the Slovakian National Party would be willing to support a Smer-Christian-Democratic Union government from the outside. Jan Slota had declared this, repeating that it was of primary importance to him that no "Hungarian" party should be in the government, and by this he meant the Bridge-Now (Most-Híd).

The Hungarian Coalition Party (MKP) got only 4.32% and dropped out of parliament. Parties of the opposition in Hungary attributed this failure of MKP to the dual citizenship law, the Treaty of Trianon Remembrance Day and to Viktor Orbán's supposedly excessive campaign.  But the fact that the party had failed to convey a clear message to its voters regarding Hungarian dual citizenship, and about the coalition possibilities of the future government, must also have played an important role.

Although MKP received the news of dual citizenship with reserve, it was enough for Iveta Radicová, prime minister candidate of the Christian-Democrats - who came second - to declare that MKP would not be a member of the Centrist-Right coalition that might be formed following the elections. Among the opposition parties of the former parliament, MKP had been the only one to suggest the possibility of a coalition with Fico. Earlier on, other parties had also raised this possibility, as a last resort, but in the campaign finish, they had all said an alliance with Smer was out of the question.

Consequently, Hungarian voters felt that the Hungarian Coalition Party had exceeded the limits of an acceptable compromise in the interest of gaining power, at the same time, it had excluded itself from the possibility of a centrist-right alliance. And that is how the majority of Hungarian votes went to Híd, which was formed only eleven months ago, and which took a clear stand on both issues. No to Fico, yes to a centrist-right coalition, as for the law on dual citizenship - which, according to Béla Bugár, only helped Fico and Slota - it was a rash decision. Just like this statement, for we now know that neither of the parties were able to grow as strong as they ought to have.

And so the circle finally closes

CROATIA: Croatians living outside the borders of the country can obtain citizenship, the precondition of which is knowledge of the Croatian language and respect of the country's legal system.

SLOVENIA: Slovenians living abroad can obtain Slovenian citizenship by an accelerated procedure.

AUSTRIA: Does not recognize dual citizenship.