Hungary's President Laszlo Solyom is visiting Serbia to meet with a Hungarian minority living in the town of Subotica. Solyom would like Hungarian ethnic minorities to be entitled to collective rights and to representation in Parliament.

President Solyom also met with Serbia’s president Boris Tadic to discuss the status of the Hungarian minority and the economic ties between the two countries. Solyom says Hungary considers Serbia a strategic partner and is making every effort to help it join the European Union.

[Laszlo Solyom, Hungarian President]:
“Hungary will have a chance to be member of a troika which will hold the EU presidency, and Hungary will be for the full integration of the Western Balkans into the EU."

Serbian President Boris Tadic highlighted the mutual cultural links and said all problems from past conflicts should be resolved.

[Boris Tadic, Serbian President]:
"At the end of this meeting, we have signed a letter asking two Academies to solve the problem of the atrocities that happened during the Second World War in a scientific way, so that the problems in our bilateral relations are put into the past, and are politically put behind us, so we can look into the future."

Hungarians are the second largest ethnic group in Serbia’s Vojvodina Province and constitute almost four percent of Serbia’s total population.