The conference ended with a recommendation to the Government of India to recognize the Roma community spread across 30 countries as a part of the Indian diaspora.

[42] Romani people first arrived in Hungary in the 14th and 15th centuries, an event which was probably connected to the collapse of Byzantine power in Anatolia, where they had likely been resident for several hundred years.

[43][Note 1] Their presence in the territory of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary was first recorded in a chapter by Mircea the Old, prince of Wallachia, who held the Fogaras (Făgăraș) region in fief as vassal to the Hungarian Crown between 1390 and 1406.

[44][38] Next, the financial accounts of the town of Brassó (now Brașov in Romania) recorded a grant of food to "Lord Emaus the Egyptian" and his 120[41] followers in 1416.

[41] While the Romani populations of Western and Central Europe faced severe legal persecution in the 15th and 16th century, the diets of Hungary and Transylvania did not pass any anti-Roma legislation during this period.

[51] In the mid-18th century, Empress Maria Theresa (1740–1780) and Emperor Joseph II (1780–1790) dealt with the Romani question by the contradictory methods of enlightened absolutism.

This formed part of a deliberate attempt to integrate the Roma into Hungarian society, by removing the economic and cultural particularities that differentiated them from the majority population.

[59] Despite this policy, the Roma still had lower incomes than non-Roma, which was believed to be connected to larger family sizes and their more rural residence pattern.

[60] Some Roma continued to participate in the non-state economy, especially music, crafts, horse-trading and commerce, their fortunes rising and falling throughout the Communist era depending on the degree of economic autonomy permitted by the regime.

[61] After the fall of Communism, Hungarian Roma suffered disproportionately from the country's economic collapse, with high unemployment rates accompanied by an increase in anti-Roma racist sentiment.

Based on current demographic trends, a 2006 estimate by Central European Management Intelligence claims that the proportion of the Romani population will double by 2050.

The marginalization of the Roma has increased since the fall of Communism,[72][62] with anti-Roma discrimination worsening since 2011 due to the rightward shift of Hungarian politics.

[74] Slightly more than 80% of Romani children complete primary education, but only one-third continue studies into the intermediate (secondary) level.

[80] In 2023, the European Court of Human Rights issued a judgment against Hungary for the racial segregation of Roma pupils at the Jókai Mór Primary School in Piliscsaba.

[83] In the transition to a market economy, Roma workers were disproportionately likely to lose their jobs, leading to severe economic hardship and social exclusion.

[62] The Roma population of Hungary still suffer from an elevated rate of poverty which can only be partly explained by their larger family sizes.

[85] NGOs, academics and religious organisations working with the Roma report that they are often denied access to public housing, and where government programmes to improve their living conditions exist, they can be impeded by local authorities.

[85] Racially-motivated violence against Roma by members of the majority population became increasingly common in the early 1990s, initially associated with far-right Skinhead gangs.

[89] Between July 2008 and August 2009, six Romani were killed and 55 injured in a string of racially motivated attacks in several rural Hungarian villages.

Amnesty International reported that in addition to these lethal attacks, there were numerous others which did not receive publicity,[93] and added that hate crimes were frequently not classified as such by the police.

This created fear in the local Romani residents, and Aladár Horváth, leader of the Roma Civil Rights Movement, called on the Red Cross to evacuate the women and children.

Four days later, some of the members returned to Gyöngyöspata, resulting in a fight between the local Romani and the Véderő that left four people injured.

[101] Members of mainstream Hungarian political parties have been accused nationally and internationally of having racist anti-Roma views and positions according to the prevailing standards in the EU.

[105] He declared that certain types of crime were committed exclusively by Roma people and when challenged reiterated his views and claimed they were summarized from the local police reports.

[106][107] In 2013, the governing Fidesz party refused to condemn the comments of their leading supporter Zsolt Bayer,[108][109][110][111][112][113] who wrote: "a significant part of the Gypsies is unfit for coexistence...

[108][114] Later Bayer declared his words had been taken out of context and misunderstood, as his goal was to stir up public opinion, he denied racial discrimination and stated that he wished only to segregate from society only those Roma people who were "criminal" and "incapable and unfit for co-existence".

Due to these comments, the Norwegian Institute of Holocaust and Religious Minorities asked Jeszenszky not to attend its International Wallenberg Symposium event.

[119][120][93][118] According to sociologist Margit Feischmidt, this identification of Romani people with crime, which is not supported by statistical evidence, is fomented by new media accounts linked to the far-right, leading to further racism, discrimination and violence against the Roma.

In 2008, Mohácsi began to receive death threats after highlighting the case of a Roma man and child who were murdered by neo-nazis and inadequacies in the subsequent police investigation.

An important legal regulation directly affecting the position of the Romani population in Hungary is Act LXXIX of 1993 on Public Education, which was amended in 1996 and 2003 to provide the national and local minority self-governing bodies with the opportunity of founding and maintaining educational institutions, and which defined the fight against segregation in schools as an objective.