What do the Hungarians think about the Hungarian-Romanian relations?

A recent poll conducted by Nezopont Institute shows that 37% of the Hungarians think that their country has rather bad relations with its neighbour Romania, a similar percentage (35%) saying that the two countries’ relations are rather good. However, 52% of the respondents would like to see an improvement in the Hungarian-Romanian relations. “Just as the partnership between Viktor Orban and his Slovakian colleague Robert Fico has a doubtless influence on the positive assessment of Hungarian-Slovakian relations, the often confrontative rhetoric of the previous Ponta Government likely affected Hungarian-Romanian relations, the assessment of which divided respondents,” according to Nezopont Institute. There have been some disputes between the Romanian Government led by Victor Ponta and the Hungarian one led by Viktor Orban in the autumn of 2015, as Hungary announced its plans to build a fence on the border with Romania to prevent immigrants from entering the country. According to the survey, more than half of the Hungarians believe that their country’s relations with Austria, Slovenia and Croatia are good. The poll was conducted between January 4 and January 7 on a sample of 1,000 people. Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com