The man's yellow-green vest bears the seemingly innocuous sentence: "I question Beneš's decrees!" The police demand that he take off his vest. When he refuses, they arrest him, take him to the police station, and investigate him. After two hours, he is released. If convicted, he faces up to six months in prison.
The man who could end up in prison for this sentence is named Örs Orosz. He is a politician from the Hungarian minority in Slovakia and a member of the extra-parliamentary conservative party Hungarian Alliance (MSZ). He described the episode of his arrest on Facebook after he was released.
The arrest took place last Friday (January 30, 2026) during a protest rally in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. The rally was directed against the so-called Beneš Decrees and against the idea of collective guilt of entire national groups after World War II – "something I deeply condemn," as Oros wrote.
Confiscation of property to this day
Part of the Beneš decrees served as the legal basis for the collective expulsion and confiscation of property of Germans and Hungarians living in the territory of the Czech-Slovak state after 1945. This set of laws, named after the then Czechoslovak president Edvard Beneš (1884–1948), is still formally in force today. In the Czech Republic, however, the part of the decrees that applies to the German national minority has long since ceased to apply.
In Slovakia, the situation is different: there, landowners who are ethnic Hungarians or their descendants are still deprived of their property based on the Beneš decrees. But not only that: at the end of December, at the initiative of Prime Minister Robert Fico and his SMER-SD party, a new law came into force according to which "denying" or "questioning" the Beneš decrees can be punished with up to six months in prison.
Playing the "Hungarian card" again
This topic has been preoccupying Slovak domestic politics and the public, including members of the Hungarian minority, for weeks. For the first time in many years, the Slovak prime minister is once again playing the "Hungarian card" to divert attention from other problems or polarize public discourse.
At the same time, the issue of the Beneš decrees has become a point of contention in bilateral Slovak-Hungarian relations, as well as a topic of the election campaign in Hungary. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who sees himself as a consistent protector of all Hungarians in neighboring countries, barely speaks about the new Slovak law, and then very restrainedly - because Robert Fico, his close political ally in the European Union. On the other hand, Orbán, for example, because of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine, launches hysterical anti-Ukrainian campaigns at the slightest provocation.
Hungarian opposition leader Peter Magyar, the favorite in the upcoming parliamentary elections on April 12, accuses the prime minister and his Fidesz party of double standards for this selective policy. The Hungarian has written bitter letters to the Slovak president and is trying to present himself as a genuine, unbiased protector of Hungarian minorities in neighboring countries.
Valuable land, without compensation
Before the issue of the Beneš decrees escalated to this point, it had been simmering for a long time. For years, southern Slovakia, where the majority of the approximately 450.000 Hungarians in Slovakia live – eight percent of the total population – has been repeatedly seized land based on the Beneš decrees. Under Fico’s government, however, these cases have become more frequent.
The official explanation is that these are cases that were not clarified and legally concluded after 1945, as well as necessary expropriations for the construction of highways. In the background, as claimed by those affected and their political representatives, there is a corruption deal with valuable plots worth billions of euros. In November 2025, the president of the MSZ party, Laszlo Gubik, spoke in a letter to the UN Special Rapporteur on Minorities about "systematic efforts by state institutions to obtain valuable land without compensation". According to Gubik, this is at least 800 hectares. The value of the affected plots "already exceeds one billion euros", and the procedures are being carried out "quietly, often without proper notification or effective legal remedies".
Under pressure due to austerity policies
The issue gained additional momentum in domestic politics when the country’s largest opposition party, the left-liberal Progressive Slovakia (PS), began sharply criticizing the practice of confiscation of property in late autumn 2025. The PS has been leading in the polls for a long time. Advocating for the interests of the Hungarian minority could bring the party even more new voters, as Hungarians in Slovakia are politically fragmented and have not had their own parliamentary representatives for years. The PS is also generally sympathetic to minorities – for example, the Roma lawyer Irena Bihariova is one of the founders of the PS and was the party’s president for a time.
Nominally social democratic, but in practice right-wing nationalist Prime Minister Robert Fico and other politicians in his coalition then accused the Socialist Party and the democratic opposition as a whole of betraying the homeland and attempting to call into question the post-war order. Fico's SMER-SD party initiated a legislative provision in parliament that would make criticism of Beneš's decrees criminally liable.
The excitement this has caused is probably intentional, as Fico and his coalition are under strong public pressure, partly due to chaotic austerity policies. However, this marks Fico's first return to anti-Hungarian nationalist patterns in a decade and a half.
The real danger for Orban
The end of the debate on the new law is not in sight. Some Slovak opposition parties, including the Socialist Party itself, are considering filing a complaint with the Constitutional Court. For Orbán, his uncritical attitude towards the law could become a real problem in the elections. Although some Fidesz politicians have already clearly condemned the law, their votes cannot be compared to Orbán's.
For the Hungarian Prime Minister, this is the second time in which he has sacrificed the interests of Hungarian minorities for his own interests: last year, Orban supported the far-right, anti-Hungarian candidate Gheorghe Simion ahead of the presidential elections in Romania.
Slovak-Hungarian minority politician Erš Oros, however, is now not only awaiting the outcome of the investigation against him following his arrest on Friday. Another proceeding is also underway – because Oros, as a critic of Beneš's decrees, together with several other activists, already reported himself at the beginning of January.
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