Controversial Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban is coming to Bratislava on 14 December on the first official visit by a Hungarian PM to Slovakia since February 1999 (also Orban at the time).
Prime Minister Iveta Radicova announced the visit to TASR newswire yesterday. Radicova met Orban earlier in the year at the Visegrad 4 summit in Budapest in July.
Strange that it has been 11 years since an official visit was made, as Slovakia and Hungary are two neighbouring countries with a shared past, albeit turbulent. Recently foreign affairs minister Mikulas Dzurinda (who as PM invited Orban to Slovakia back in 1999) has been putting a lot of effort into improving the relations between the two countries, and he feels positive that things are on the right track after years of what could be referred to as mutual hostility.
Dzurinda recently initiated the re-establishment of joint Slovak-Hungarian committees, which are supposed to focus on sensitive issues.
Orban, who with his controversial dual citizenship law inflamed relations between the two countries just before the Slovak elections, has now assured the Slovak PM that Hungarian officials have no qualms with Slovakia and no interest in conflict.