House speaker: Szeklerland deserves ‘restitution’ from Budapest, Bucharest

Speaker of Parliament László Kövér has argued that Szeklerland and Szeklers deserved historical restitution from Budapest and Bucharest.

The Szeklers could expect “a good word” from both capitals because both Romania and Hungary were in debt morally to Szeklerland and the Szeklers, Kövér said on Saturday during the inauguration ceremony of a renovated building of the Education Centre of the University in Odorheiu Secuiesc (Székelyudvarhely).

He said that in the course of one thousand years, Szeklerland and its people had given Hungary more than they had received in return. In Romania’s case the timeline was one hundred years.

Neither Romania nor Hungary, he said, wanted to lose control over their own economic resources or their value-creating workforce. So it was incumbent on both countries to take action to prevent this from happening in Szeklerland, he added.

Kövér referred to the past mistakes of Budapest and Bucharest which had resulted in the gross neglect of Szeklerland in terms of the development of infrastructure and the input of capital.

He said the self-government of Odorheiu Secuiesc had been ahead of the Hungarian state when in 1998, three years before Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania was established, it hosted an external branch of the Hungarian university, expanding higher education in Odorheiu Secuiesc, he said, adding that the time had come for the Hungarian state-maintained Sapientia University to launch degree courses in Székelyudvarhely.

Source: MTI