The law, should it come into effect next month, would criminalize playing any national anthem but the Slovak one at public events on certain occasions — for example, public holidays — unless a member of a foreign delegation is at the event. The law also carries a fine of 7,000 euros ($7,890).

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The law was seen as an outrage in neighboring Hungary (“OUTRAGEOUS! SLOVAKIA BANS SINGING THE HUNGARIAN NATIONAL ANTHEM!” read the headline in Daily News Hungary, an English-language outlet). Hungarians make up about 9 percent of the population of Slovakia and are the country’s largest ethnic minority. The Hungarian minority of about half a million people could be fined thousands of euros for singing the Hungarian anthem at a match of FC DAC 1904, a soccer team based in what is now southern Slovakia with a large ethnic Hungarian population.

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FC DAC 1904 itself weighed in on Twitter.

There is a Slovakian-Hungarian party — Most-Hid — in parliament, but, in a twist, they voted for the law. Party leader Bela Bugar said they supported it by “mistake,” and Most-Hid complained on Facebook: “If a law could be misunderstood by parliamentarians, lawyers with big names, then it is likely that ordinary people may be misunderstood.”

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And so, according to a Euronews report, the lawmakers are asking their outgoing president to not sign the law.