The inaugural session of the new National Assembly of Hungary will be held on Saturday, 9 May at the Budapest Parliament Building in Budapest, Hungary. Prime Minister-elect Péter Magyar of the Tisza Party will officially be selected as the Ninth Prime Minister of the Third Hungarian Republic then and there.
Now, we have some interesting news coming out about the inaugural ceremony.
According to the Roma Press Centre, the so-called ‘Gypsy Anthem’ will be performed by the Sükösd Roma Child Choir. Magyar himself has confirmed this via his official Facebook page. Choir leader Zsolt Nébl claims that Magyar had invited them after his campaign visit to Sükösd, a small town of around 3,000 people in the Southern part of Hungary, all the way back in November.
While it is a nice gesture, it is not without controversy.
The Gypsy Anthem is not a well-known piece in Hungary, and the idea of an ethnic minority in the country having its own anthem and having it played in parliament may be seen by some as encouraging racial division. Similar criticisms have been voiced in the United States when the so-called ‘Black National Anthem’ was played at the start of Super Bowls, which has been the case every year since 2021.
At Péter Magyar’s parliamentary inauguration, the Hungarian National Anthem will evidently be played—the original poem was written by Ferenc Kölcsey in 1823, and the melody was composed by Ferenc Erkel in 1844.
The National Anthem will be followed by the Székely Anthem. The Szeklers are an ethnic Hungarian group living in Transylvania, Romania. Their anthem was frequently played at official state events during the tenure of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary as well.
It will be followed by the Anthem of Europe—which is Ode to Joy by Ludwig van Beethoven, written in 1824—and the aforementioned Gypsy Anthem, bringing the total number of anthems played at the Péter Magyar Inauguration to four.
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