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It is a verifiable truth that the borders of the European states (like other state borders anywhere in the world) use to be artificial or are subject to expiration. However, it is not widely known that those borders have been used to divide peoples and to justify the creation of societies that have usurped the category of "peoples" and that have given themselves the right to be sovereign. They claim an exclusive right, thus leaving former existing peoples out of the game. Or, in other words, they marginalize peoples that have forged their collective personality throughout the centuries.

These facts are particularly obvious in Central Europe, where big empires have been created and burnt throughout the 20th century. New states have been built out of their ashes. Those states have their own borders and their own disintegrating policies against historical peoples. One of those is the Hungarian people: although having its own sovereign state (some 11 million inhabitants), Hungarians are dispersed (some 3,5 million people) throughout several neighbouring states.

During the last years, there have been several initiatives aimed at bringing together Hungarians, across dividing borders. These initiatives have helped in creating a project for recovering the European space on the basis of collective identities, languages and cultures. One of the last initiatives framed in that idea has been a decision by the Hungarian government to grant Hungarian citizenship to people belonging to Hungarian communities in neighbouring countries. The decision has been implemented since 1st January, and its consequences are already being felt. One of them is the unanimous protest (including some repressive measures) by the governments of neighbouring countries, all of them members of the European Union.

According to the Hungarian government, all ethnic Hungarians are now entitled to travel through all areas traditionally inhabited by them, only needing a Hungarian ID. With no police controls. But that is not because the affected states must yield themselves to Budapest's diktat. That is because the majority of them are members of the Schengen Area, which allows people to travel to any other member state. According to the states that are unhappy with Budapest's decision, that one is an illegal interpretation of the Schengen Agreement, whereas the Hungarian government thinks the contrary.

The initiative allows different interpretations. The symbolic one is one of the most interesting, because it relates to getting Hungarians' own space back. Another one, also interesting, is linked to the value of identity, to the reunification of the Hungarian nation beyond an Europe that calls itself "without borders" but that many times behaves as if those borders were immutable and impossible to be transformed into bridges. From a historical point of view, the position of the current Hungarian government is equivalent to denouncing the Treaty of Trianon. That agreement, signed in 1920, unfairly partitioned the Hungarian people, as a punishment for having lost the First World War. And looking into the future, Budapest's position seems a call to change the map of Europe, so that it can be fully adapted to deep human realities.

Anyway, some MEPs have been outspoken against Budapest's initiative. According to them, all that stuff challenges well-established borders and is a threat to the stability of Europe. Probably they are right, only if they are thinking about being tied to old times that have no future in our globalized world. Maybe they are right, too, if they think about being tied to a disunited Europe that is nevertheless progressing towards its union beyond borders.