Romania to discuss draft autonomy bills for Szeklerland and Hungarians in Transylvania

The Romanian House of Representatives will discuss the draft autonomy bills for Szeklerland and the Hungarians in Transylvania on Thursday under an emergency procedure. On Wednesday, several politicians from the ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD) called for their rejection.

According to the agenda approved by the House committee and published on the House’s website on Wednesday, the meeting will be held in the early afternoon in a hybrid format, meaning that MPs who are not present can join online, MTI reports.

All three draft autonomy bills are on the agenda, which were submitted as individual bills in the Romanian Chamber of Deputies on 20 December by Zoltán Zakariás, President of the Hungarian Association of Transylvania (EMSZ). They were also supported by the acting president of the Hungarian Civic Force (MPE), József Kulcsár-Terza, who, like Zakariás, won a seat on the list of the Hungarian Democratic Alliance of Romania (RMDSZ).

One is the draft framework law on the cultural autonomy of national communities, the second is the cultural autonomy statute of the Hungarian national community. These draft laws were prepared in the workshops of the Transylvanian Hungarian National Council (EMNT). The third initiative submitted is the autonomy statute for Szeklerland, drafted by the Szekler National Council (SZNT), which will be submitted to the Romanian legislature for the fourth time.

A week ago, Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu asked the Speaker to quickly reject the autonomy bills on his social media page, putting them on the agenda between the two holidays. In a post, the prime minister described the bills as “toxic initiatives”.

The leader of the PSD’s lower house, Ciprian Serban, said the same on Wednesday, calling the drafts “taoxic and divisive”. He stressed that he and his party colleagues were firmly convinced that bills for autonomy for Szeklerland or cultural autonomy based on ethnic criteria “have no place in a democratic state”.

In a Facebook post, PSD MP Marius Budai also argued against segregation based on ethnic criteria, saying that all the drafts in some way advocate this.

Alfred Simonis, the acting president of the Chamber of Deputies, criticised the fact that the members of the Alliance for the Unification of Romanians (AUR), which is considered extremist by other Romanian parties, did not support the draft laws being discussed under the urgency procedure at a meeting of the House committee on Wednesday. The PSD politician expressed the hope that none of the political groups would use Thursday’s session for campaigning purposes and would not create a scandal.

The autonomy statute for Szeklerland, drafted by the SZNT, will be submitted to the Romanian legislature for the fourth time, after being rejected by the Romanian majority in 2004, 2018 and 2020. The last time it was tabled, a domestic political scandal in Romania was triggered by the fact that the Szekler autonomy statute was passed from the bicameral Romanian Parliament to the Senate, which was responsible for taking a substantive decision, as a “tacitly adopted” draft: this was due to the expiry of the deadline for its discussion.

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