Several hundreds of thousands of signatures still need to be collected over the next week for the success of a European initiative by the Szekler National Council on the protection of national regions.
Foreign affairs commissioner of the council Attila Dabis told public news channel M1 that once an enough number of signatures are collected, the European Union will hopefully consider establishing a system that secures the survival of indigenous minorities.
So far, a total of 318,000 supporting signatures have been collected online and an additional 200,000 on printed sheets, he added.
For the initiative to be successful, at least one million supporting signatures are needed from seven member states by May 7 this year.
Parliament on Tuesday approved a resolution to support a European initiative by the Szekler National Council on the protection of national regions.
The proposal by green opposition LMP, supported by the ruling parties, conservative opposition Jobbik and by the Socialists, was approved unanimously with 158 votes in favour.
The decision has symbolic significance given 2020 has been declared a year of national cohesion one hundred years after the Trianon Treaty was signed, the resolution states.
The Szekler National Council fought for six years to achieve a European court ruling which obliged the European Commission to consider a proposal submitted for the European initiative.
In line with the resolution, parliament welcomes the initiative dubbed European Citizens’ Initiative for the Equality of the Regions and Sustainability of the Regional Cultures which aims to convince the European Union to pay special attention to regions whose national, cultural, religious and ethnic characteristics are different from those of the surrounding regions.
Parliament calls on Hungarians inside and outside Hungary to support the initiative with their signature.
For the initiative launched on May 7 last year to be successful, at least one million supporting signatures are needed from seven member states by May 7 this year.
After the vote, Katalin Szili, the prime minister’s commissioner, urged public support for the European initiative.
She said that
Europe has 400 ethnic minorities and one out of seven EU citizens belongs to an indigenous or regional minority,
and called on ethnic Hungarian communities and organisations in the diaspora to promote the initiative.
Hungary’s five parliamentary parties have put forward a proposal for a resolution in support of a European Citizens’ Initiative on protecting national regions.
The proposal by the governing parties, Jobbik, the Socialists and LMP published on parliament’s website on Wednesday backs the initiative of the Szekler National Council.
The initiative for the Equality of the Regions and Sustainability of the Regional Cultures aims to convince the European Commission to create a cohesion policy that pays special attention to regions with national, ethnic, cultural, religious or linguistic characteristics that are different from those of the surrounding regions.
The proposal has symbolic weight, too, given the declaration of the year of national cohesion 100 years after the signing of the Trianon Peace Treaty, parliament’s statement said.
The proposed resolution states that the deprivations of such regions, including geographical areas without administrative powers, can be addressed by ensuring equal access to structural funds and other EU funds, resources and programmes, while promoting their regional identity.
The resolution also calls on Hungarians at home and abroad to support the citizens’ initiative and to sign it.
Green opposition LMP is planning to put forward a proposal for a parliamentary resolution to promote the collection of signatures for a European initiative on protecting national regions, group leader László Lóránt Keresztes said on Wednesday.
LMP will call a seven-party consultation of party group leaders on the matter, he told a press conference.
It took seven years of legal efforts by the Szekler National Council to get the opportunity to collect signatures, and the initiative dubbed European Citizens’ Initiative for the Equality of the Regions and Sustainability of the Regional Cultures was launched last spring, he said.
The aim is to convince the European Commission to introduce legislation that will make cohesion policy pay special attention to regions with national, ethnic, cultural, religious or linguistic characteristics that are different from those of the surrounding regions, he added. The initiative has been welcomed by parties in Hungary that “understand the Hungarian national idea”, seeing it as a tool to promote policies geared towards Hungarian communities abroad, he said.
For the initiative to be successful, at least one million supporting signatures are needed from seven member states, he said.
So far, no significant progress has been made, he added.
Keresztes said he would also ask for support from European green parties because the issue concerned fundamental European values.
The national cohesion committee of Hungary’s parliament issued a resolution on Tuesday in support of a European Citizens’ Initiative on regional equality and the sustainability of regional cultures.
The resolution, backed in the committee unanimously, welcomes the initiative launched by the Szekler National Council calling on the European Union to pay special attention, under its cohesion policy, to regions that are distinguished by national, ethnic, cultural, religious or linguistic characteristics,
Károly Pánczél, the committee’s (Fidesz) head, told MTI.
The resolution states that such regions, including geographical areas without administrative powers, can be prevented from falling behind by ensuring that they have equal access to the Structural Funds and other EU funds, resources and programmes, which also help them to preserve their specific characteristics and regional identity.
The resolution calls on Hungarians in the motherland and in neighbouring countries to sign the initiative in as large numbers as possible, Pánczél added.
Associate of the Ministry of Defence refers to the local authorities that they support the military exercise of the Romanian army, called Concordia 19, this week in Csíkszereda (Miercurea Ciuc) – the mayor’s office of the town was just notified about the military action.
According to maszol.ro, the venue is symbolic because the Hungarian community in Szeklerland is considered to be a threat to national security in Romania. There is an intentionally misguided or just simply false communication about viewing the region as a dangerous zone of the country – RMDSZ (local party of Hungarians) representative, Attila Korodi said.
The counties of Hargitha and Kovászna have been venues of grand army exercise since Monday and will continue to be till the end of the week. The main phase of the event is going to be on Wednesday in Csíkszereda where there is a fictive cybernetic attack in which a beer factory explodes, and the people in the vicinity get infected. 500 people are attending the military activity from the army, Interior Ministry, Romanian Intelligence, Government Security and the Special Telecommunication Service – so not only the military but the institutions, responsible for national security also attend this exercise.
Romanian war helicopters on the military parade of 1st December 2018 Photo: www.facebook.com/pg/Romanian-Army-101442796685076/photos
As Brigadier General Marian Botea has explained before: the interinstitutional cooperation of the armed forces is aimed to be improved – it is their duty to prepare for hybrid warfare. According to the military officer, such a threat is possible from Russia.
“We all know what happened in Ukraine and Georgia in 2014. We have analysed that warfare and want to be prepared for such a case”
– Botea said to Digi24.
The reason why these two counties and Csíkszereda were chosen for the exercise is, that the cooperation of the institutional network for national security works excellently in this region – it could be observed during the papal visit. Botea says that the local authorities also support the army exercise.
According to Csíkszereda mayor, Róbert Kálmán Ráduly says that the venue choice of Concordia 19 clearly tells us that the Hungarian majority in Szeklerland is considered to be a national security threat in Romania.
“Even the existence of Szeklerland is the failure of the Romanian nation-state, and we can see that we officially mean a threat to national security”
– the mayor said regular radio interview on Monday morning.
As RMDSZ representative, Attila Korodi sees it, there is an intentionally misguided or just simply false communication about viewing the region as a dangerous zone of the country. According to the politician, it is important to have the army ready for such conflicts as in this simulated situation, but in his opinion, the venue choice is very “extremely unfortunate”.
Csíkszereda (Miercurea Ciuc) and its vicinity Photo: www.facebook.com/pg/csikszereda/photo
Korodi adds that it was a serious mistake of the ministry to justify the exercise with the conflict between Russian and the post-Soviet states.
This way, they depict Szeklerland to be similar to Georgia and Ukraine as a dangerous zone where such a threat is possible – the press already supports this false approach.
The organiser institutions did not ask for help from the mayor’s office of Csíkszereda – vice mayor, Zoltán Füleki said to maszol.ro. He says that there will be no need for road closures or traffic restriction – nothing was mentioned about it in the notification of the army exercise at least.
In the announcement of the mayor’s office, the inhabitants of Csíkszereda are alerted that during the exercise, low flight altitude should be expected (min. 300 metres) from Spartan warplanes between 7-9 October in the line: Gyergyószentmiklós–Csíkszereda–Sepsiszentgyörgy–Székelydvarhely. The office also reports that the exercise affects the Western part of Csíkszereda on the right bank of Olt river – near national road 13A.
According to Friday press conference, Marian Botea stated that first aid provision, for those who are infected by chemical substance, is also planned to be practised, so the hospitals are also going to be involved in the exercise. Edit Kiss, spokeswoman of Hargita Megyei Sürgősségi Kórház (Emergency Hospital of Hargita County) reports that no contribution has been requested from their institution, so they are not going to attend the army exercise.
You can read about how Romanian intellectuals have recently incited against the “growing Hungarian influence” here. You can also read about the physical aggression of Romanian nationalist mob in the Hungarian military cemetery of Úzvölgye here.
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).
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.
Hungary has turned to the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers over a dispute with Romania around a memorial site in the Valea Uzului (Úzvölgye) military cemetery in the country’s Harghita County, a lawmaker of ruling Fidesz said in Strasbourg on Tuesday.
The military cemetery is the largest WW1 memorial site in Harghita County. However, the local council of the eastern Romanian town of Darmanesti, in Bacau County, has moved to establish a memorial site in the cemetery for Romanian soldiers who fell in the second world war. This has seen the erection of 52 concrete crosses and one large Orthodox cross in the fenced-off cemetery site holding the graves of some 600 soldiers of Austria-Hungary.
By filing a report with the committee on the situation, Hungary aims to prevent encroachments through military cemeteries, Attila Tilki said.
Tilki, who is taking part in the autumn session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), told MTI by phone that Hungary expects the Committee of Ministers to declare that the local council of Darmanesti had overstepped its authority when it erected concrete crosses on the site holding the graves of Austro-Hungarian soldiers.
“We hope that the Committee of Ministers can take action that will help prevent similar situations elsewhere in the European Union,” Tilki said.
He said every European country had military cemeteries that hold the graves of other countries’ soldiers.
“If we don’t take firm enough action in the case of the Valea Uzului cemetery, that can embolden nationalist forces, and other military cemeteries — and through them, the local communities — could be shown the same kind of disrespect,” Tilki said.
He also expressed hope that the uniform opinion to be put forward by the committee would help restore the cemetery to its original state.
Romanians of Szeklerland demand a separate government office for themselves, and they also want representation in the parliament – based on the announcement of Agerpres (news agency). At the Summer University of Marosfő, one of the main topics was the situation of the “endangered” Romanian minority of Szeklerland.
Marian Stipou – leader of the Romanian Civil Forum of Harghita and Mures counties – demands urgent steps from the government to
stop the Hungarian government’s attempts of ultimately expanding its co-sovereignty to Szeklerland.
He wants to “normalise” the relationship of the two ethnical groups in the counties of Harghita, Mures and Covasna. The new office’s task would be to protect the rights and the cultural identity of the Romanian minority and to stop the ethnical discrimination of Romanians in the region – said Stipou. The leader of the new government office should be the “national identity state councillor” – added the civil leader.
Stipou also wants to finance the cultural projects, institutions, publications, civil and church associations from the state budget. He initiated a new law to ensure the representation of the Romanian population of the three Szekler counties in the lower house of the Romanian Parliament. Besides he also wants governmental support to build an outdoor museum in Voinesti (Covasna county), to renew the orthodox churches of Bretcu and Varghis) and to settle the situation of Úzvölgy’s military cemetery. Moreover, he also wants assistance to the publication of a new book about Transylvanian history in several languages.
Szeklerland in Romania Photo: wikipedia.org
Romanian Civil Forum of Szeklerland also demands a pact of all political parties in which they solemnly swear that they will never accept the ethnic-based, territorial autonomy in Romania. The forum calls upon the Romanian government to
firmly reject the abnormal intervention of Budapest into the internal affairs of the country.
The Romanian civil forum wants an investigation of the Hungarian citizenship and land ownership in Romania and to examine the long-term consequences of the Hungarian tenders in the region. It also suggests accepting a law that would exclude people with double-citizenship from public administration – following the Slovakian model.
The forum supports the government’s investment in motorways between Targu Mures-Iasi and Brasov-Bacau moreover, the construction of the airport of Brasov. In the meantime, it urges Klaus Iohannis (president) to turn to the High Council of Defence, discuss the problems of the three counties and decide about the necessary measures to fix them.
The same kind of proposal has appeared earlier at the Summer University of Marosfő, by Jean-Adrian Andrei (prefect of Harghita county), who supported the idea of a governmental office, concerning the problems of Romanian communities in minority. Based on the investigation of Maszol.ro: the Romanian civil forums of the three Szekler counties are all dominated by right-wing extremists.
The Hungarian nation today has the political and economic means to protect itself and preserve its independence, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Saturday in his annual address at the “Tusványos” summer university.
Soon it will have the physical means to defend itself, too, Orbán told several thousand people gathered at the event held in Baile Tusnad (Tusnádfürdő), in central Romania.
Orbán said the country was on a promising path but dangers to its continued development came not from domestic sources but were external.
Outlining Hungary’s post-communist past, he said that between 1989 and 1991, the task of the transition generation had been secure the country’s freedom and independence. The following four years were about building a capitalist market economy and a democratic legal and political system. Between 1994 and 2010, “the successors to the socialist system and their internationalist helpers” reigned and had then to be defeated, he said. A new community-based national system was then introduced and built, while Fidesz won the two-thirds majority in parliament needed to achieve this, Orbán added.
The prime minister said
his political generation would now be “prime time” for the next 15 years and the most important tasks lay ahead.
Hungary’s government has succeeded in regaining the country’s sovereignty and protecting its borders against migration, Orbán said. The International Monetary Fund “went home”, he added. “Our generation has been given a historic opportunity to strengthen the Hungarian nation,” the prime minister said. “This has been an unfairly hard struggle up until now and will remain an unfairly hard one going forward.”
He said that over the course of the 30 years since the country’s democratic transition, Hungarians had realised that “it’s not about setting a goal for a certain time period, but rather about giving meaning to our own lives within a period of time.”
“This is true not just of individuals but of each generation,” Orbán said, underlining the need for the current generation to “give meaning” to its life.
“Hungary today is on a promising path, its finances in order, the public debt is falling, growth is strong, wages are rising, small and medium-sized businesses are expanding, families are getting bigger, and nation-building is vibrant,” he said.
Orbán said that thanks to complicated maneuvers, US billionaire “George Soros’s man has been prevented from taking over the European Commission and placing his ideological guerrillas in important European positions.”
The prime minister said the commission should act as the guardian of the European treaties.
“Political activism must be stopped,” he said.
“It’s not a political body … its job isn’t to organise political attacks against member states.” “It sets the direction and the strategic decisions are made by the European Council of elected prime ministers,” he added.
Orbán insisted that “errors made in the EU over the last five years” must be corrected, especially in the areas of migration and the economy. The commission should no longer preoccupy itself with migration, he said, adding that a council of interior ministers of Schengen area member states should take over all responsibilities related to migration.
He called for European socialism to be stopped in its tracks and for a competitive European economy to be restored.
“We must support successful economies and reject the idea of raising unemployment benefits at European level,” Orbán said.
Instead, jobs must be created and taxes reduced everywhere, he said, adding that red tape must be cut and investments encouraged in place of austerity policies.
The prime minister said that if the government’s assessment of the European economic outlook turned out to be the case next spring, it would be necessary to draw up a second economic protection plan by then, and possibly a third one in the autumn of 2020. The action plans would have to be geared towards improving the country’s competitiveness, he said, adding that western European economies were not developing well enough to support Hungary’s desired growth trajectory. He said
Hungary must rethink its plans for 2020-2021 in order to minimise external risks and mobilise internal resources.
Speaking about the impending agenda, Orbán said Hungary would be embroiled in a battle of the rule of law, too. He added, however, that Hungary must “hold its nerve” but at the same time “we shouldn’t offend our partners”.
Referring to the Finnish EU presidency, Orbán said: “We will evaluate the state of Hungarian rule of law with our Finnish friends.”
Prime Minister Viktor Orban said common wisdom held that
liberal democracies were the natural order in a world pervaded by “a kind of liberal internationalism” leading to the formation of a “liberal empire”.
The European Union, he insisted, was an embodiment of this idea. “Obviously, something entirely different is happening in Hungary,” Orbán said.
Photo: MTI
The prime minister said his political inheritance from the period before 2010 was an apt illustration of the problems associated with liberalism. Less than half of the country’s active population contributed to economic output. Fully 3.6 million people had jobs and 1.8 million people paid taxes, he said, characterising this as “a form of long and uncomfortable suicide.”
“Now, 4.5 million people are in work today and all of them pay taxes,” he added.
Further, the debt situation had been “hopeless” and cultural identity waning, Orbán said. The sense of belonging to a nation had been slipping away and Hungarian communities living beyond the border had struggled to withstand pressure to assimilate. Moreover, the means to protect sovereignty — the police and army — had been degraded, he added.
In 2010, solving these inherited problems within a framework of liberal democracy looked impossible and so something else had to be done, he said.
Orbán argued for preserving the framework of the free market system and democratic legal and political institutions while changing the existing social structures. “In other words, ‘yes’ to democracy, ‘no’ to liberalism,” Orbán said. “We had to rethink and put the relationship between the individual and society on a new footing,” he said.
Orban said the liberal system consisted of a cluster of individuals competing against one another without the existence of a nation. “At best, there’s a political nation,” he said. In contrast to this, he said, the “illiberal or national point of view” sees the nation as “a historically and culturally defined community whose members must be protected and made capable of fending for themselves in the world as a group”. This approach recognises individual performance that also serves the good of the community, he said.
Orbán said that in an illiberal or national system, achievements such as self-care, work, self-sufficiency, paying taxes, starting a family, raising a child, were not private matters but were a reflection of participating in the nation.
Hungary has established itself as an “illiberal state”, Orbán said, adding that the country had been reorganised into a “unique Christian democratic state”.
Orbán argued against the assumption that “all democracies are by nature liberal and Christian democracy must also be liberal”.
He said the idea of liberal democracy had only been viable for as long as it had “a positive effect on humanity” by safeguarding personal freedoms and private ownership.
“But once it started breaking the ties that bind man to reality and life, started questioning gender identity, devaluing religious identity and deemed national affiliation to be redundant, its contents radically changed,” the prime minister said. “This is the zeitgeist of the past 20-30 years in Europe.”
“According to the liberal concept of freedom, you can only be free if you are free from everything that makes you belong; from borders, from the past, from language, from religion and tradition,” Orbán said. Illiberal thinking maintains that the individual’s adherence to freedom must to trump the interests of the community, he added.
Photo: MTI
The prime minister said the point of illiberal politics was Christian freedom. “Policies geared towards Christian freedom are about working to protect everything that liberals neglect, forget about or despise,” Orbán said. “We are going to spend the next 15 years on the mission of our generation to confront the liberal spirit of the era and liberal internationalism,” the prime minister said, adding that whereas the lay of the land may favour the liberals, “there is something on our side nonetheless that can be said to be beautiful, free and just; something that can be summed up as Christian freedom.”
Orbán said liberals hated illiberals “because they are driven by an imperialist mindset based on exclusivity”.
“They can’t stand a little stubbornness,” he said. If it is shown that there is another form of community organisation, “this reveals the fiction of the doctrine of universal salvation”. “And it’s intolerable if Hungary, Poland, Austria, Italy and the Czech Republic stick to their own views, and they must be hated, because they stand against universal good of humanity.”
The prime minister said it was indeed possible in this liberal age for an EU country with a population of ten of million to climb out of debt, to restore economic sovereignty, to develop faster than liberal democracies, to successfully reject migration, to protect the family and culture, to promote national unification and nation-building, and to form the conditions for Christian freedom. “But this requires courage and unity,” he said.
The Hungarian state supports ethnic Hungarian parties and organisations abroad because this serves Hungarian interests and it is in line with the constitution, Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén said at the summer university in Baile Tusnad (Tusnádfürdő), central Romania, on Friday.
Semjén told a podium discussion held with the participation of representatives from Hungarian communities abroad that it was not indifferent whether there were ethnic Hungarian mayors in towns and villages and whether Hungarians were represented in parliament or were part of government coalitions.
The Hungarian state is currently spending an annual 130 billion forints (EUR 400m) on ethnic Hungarian communities as against 9 billion forints in 2009, Semjén said.
The initial aim for supporting these communities was to help them preserve their identity, he said. Then a few years ago economic development schemes were launched and these have created win-win situations, he added.
“This is good for [ethnic] Hungarians, for the majority nation, and also for Hungary because every forint invested resulted in another forint of growth and this had a positive impact also on the growth of the Hungarian economy,” he said.
Semjén said the number of individuals who were granted Hungarian citizenship in a fast-track naturalisation process was near 1.1 million. In contrast with 1990, when Hungary was one of the weakest states in the Carpathian Basin, it has become the strongest in the region after the breakup of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, he added.
“We are strong, we have self-awareness and we are progressing further,” he said.
Speaking at a roundtable discussion evaluating the European Parliament elections in May, the head of the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Office said that parties with a strong, right wing, Christian Democratic conservative agenda that had been most sharply “attacked” had cleared the ballot with the best results.
Hungary’s ruling Fidesz had gained the best result among parties in the European People’s Party group, Gergely Gulyás said. He told the forum that the incumbent Hungarian government had the strongest support possible in a democracy, adding that the opposition was “in a state of crisis”.
As we wrote a few days ago, the Hungarian state will provide financing for 66 large agricultural projects in Romania’s Szeklerland, read more details HERE.
The government’s policy for Hungarian communities abroad achieved a “breakthrough” in the 2010s, an official said at the opening of this year’s “Tusványos” Summer University.
Árpád János Potápi, the state secretary with the Prime Minister’s Office responsible for Hungarian communities abroad, said Hungarian communities were now stronger and ready to get through tougher times should there be any hardships.
He said for the past thirty years the summer university in Baile Tusnad (Tusnádfürdő), in central Romania, had been a hotbed of ideas shaping today’s Hungarian policy for Hungarian communities abroad.
Between 2018 and 2022, the Hungarian government is further strengthening the national identity of Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin, as well as supporting families and competitiveness by boosting Hungarian companies and communities in the region, Potápi said.
Besides strengthening Hungarian communities, the Hungarian government also aims to promote cooperation among central European nations, Potápi said.
Zsolt Németh, head of the Hungarian parliament’s foreign affairs committee and one of the founders of the summer university in 1990, said national cohesion among Hungarians was now stronger than ever.
Central Europe is now capable of standing up together against an “aggressive utopia called federalism promoted throughout Europe”,
aimed at “dismantling” national identities, sovereignty and Christian values. The Hungarian government is committed to reuniting Europe, but as a Europe of nations, he said.
The Baile Tusnad summer university is being held for the 30th time this year.
The event provides a forum for ethnic Hungarians to talk with each other as well as to the many visitors from the Carpathian Basin, the Hungarian government and neighbouring countries, with guests from Slovakia, Croatia and Serbia as well as Hungary and Romania.
The Hungarian state will provide financing for 66 large agricultural projects in Romania’s Szeklerland, ethnic Hungarian party RMDSZ said in its newsletter on Thursday.
According to the report,
nearly 24 billion forints (EUR 73.6m) will be distributed among the 66 winning bidders.
Mónika Kozma, executive of the Pro Economica Foundation, told MTI that the grants are aimed at covering 50 percent of the project budgets of small and medium-size companies.
According to Kozma,
some of the bidders have applied for funds to introduce new technologies to existing businesses, while others will use the money to finance greenfield developments.
The programme is aimed at promoting integration between farming companies to facilitate sustainable development in Szeklerland‘s farming sector.
A statement released by Romania’s foreign ministry on recent talks between the Hungarian and Romanian foreign ministers regarding unresolved bilateral issues will make it more difficult to improve ties, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Szijjártó discussed with Teodor Melescanu Romania’s recently adopted administrative code and developments at a recent commemoration in the Valea Uzului (Úzvölgye) military cemetery, on the sidelines of an informal meeting of foreign ministers of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) countries.
The Romanian ministry’s statement cited Szijjártó as having asked “for the decisions of Romania‘s judiciary institutions to be ignored and for the state to interfere in the justice system”, Hungary’s foreign ministry said.
Melescanu was quoted in the Romanian statement as having said that the government could not interfere in the decisions of the judiciary, citing the principle of the separation of powers.
Szijjártó said: “In a country goverened by the rule of law that respects European values, the ones to get punished are not those who attend a peaceful demonstration at a cemetery, but rather those who attack them.”
The minister called on the Romanian parliament and government to do everything in their power to create the legal conditions for Romania’s minorities to exercise their rights.
Further, he said, no one should be allowed to slap “exorbitant fines” on members of national minorities just for the use of their symbols.
Hungary’s foreign minister discussed with his Romanian counterpart Romania’s recently adopted administrative code and developments at a commemoration in that country’s WWI military cemetery at Valea Uzului (Úzvölgye), in Slovakia on Tuesday.
Péter Szijjártó held talks with Teodor Melescanu in Strbske pleso (Csorbató), northern Slovakia, on the sidelines of an informal meeting of foreign ministers of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) countries.
In connection with the administrative law,
Szijjártó asked Melescanu to take steps to ensure that a provision on minority rights be again incorporated in the legislation, Hungary’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
The provision would guarantee for minorities the use of their mother tongue even if the community makes up for less than 20 percent of the region’s population, the ministry said.
Szijjártó also asked his colleague to help facilitate further consultations between the two countries’ experts on the issue of the Valea Uzului cemetery and to promote a joint visit to the site as soon as possible.
In April this year, the local council erected a memorial site for Romanian soldiers fallen in the second world war within the cemetery.
Ahead of the site’s inauguration late on June 6, the visitors of that event clashed with Szekler demonstrators and eventually forced their way into the cemetery. Details HERE.
Hungary has slammed the incident as “blasphemous, in violation of laws and international agreements and also deeply immoral” and demanded the site’s restoration, where they said the memorial had been erected over the ashes of Hungarian soldiers.
Szijjártó underlined to Melescanu the Hungarian government’s intention that bilateral relations should be restored to rest on mutual respect and developed in a positive effort.
Between July 23 and 28, the 30th Bálványos/Tusványos Summer University and Student Camp will take place in Baile Tusnad (Tusnádfürdő), in central Romania.
The main themes being explored this year are the future of Europe and Transylvania, Hungarian national unity and the change of political system 30 years ago, the organisers said at a press event in Miercurea Ciuc (Csíkszereda) late on Monday.
The event provides a forum for ethnic Hungarians to talk with each other as well as the many visitors from the Carpathian Basin, the Hungarian government and neighbouring countries, with guests from Slovakia, Croatia and Serbia as well as Hungary and Romania.
Famous Hungarian bands perform in Tusványos Festival: Quimby, Ákos, Magna Cum Laude, Anna and the Barbies, Bagossy Brothers Company and many more.
PM Orbán will give a lecture on Saturday on the big stage together with László Tőkés, head of the Transylvanian Hungarian National Council. Fidesz lawmaker Zsolt Németh, the event’s founder and chairman of the Hungarian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, will moderate.
Also, podium discussions will be held to mark the 100th anniversary of the first world war and the Trianon Peace Treaty.
Talks on the Valea Uzului (Úzvölgye) memorial cemetery in Romania, a resting place of Hungarian WW1 soldiers, started between Hungarian and Romanian authorities, Colonel Vilmos Kovács, the head of the Hungarian delegation, told MTI on Wednesday.
Hungary has slammed the incident as “blasphemous, in violation of laws and international agreements and also deeply immoral” and demanded the site’s restoration, where they said the memorial had been erected over the ashes of Hungarian soldiers.
At the meeting of officials from the two countries’ authorities responsible for war grave maintenance, the Hungarian party reiterated its request for restoration. The talks will continue in September, with the officials’ visit to the cemetery, Kovács, who also heads the Hungarian Institute and Museum for Military History, said. At that visit, representatives of all countries who have soldiers buried in Valea Uzului will be invited, he said.
Hungary has proposed exhuming the bodies underneath the new memorial to prove that there are indeed Hungarians interred there, he said. Romania wants to expand that procedure to all the cemetery, he added.
Kovács said that contrary to news reports, the Romanian defence ministry’s takeover of the cemetery’s maintenance has not been decided yet.
The Sanmartin (Csíkszentmárton) local council, which so far supervised it, “has done a good job”, he said, and Hungary does not want changes in that respect, he said.
Kovács said that hopefully the September talks will bring “a professional and mutually satisfying solution”.
Romanian nationalists aiming to inaugurate an illegally erected memorial in the WWII cemetery of Úz Valley attacked Hungarians protecting the cemetery’s entrance. The Romanian government claims that nothing violent happened while Budapest says that it is outrageous that Romanian authorities could not protect Hungarian citizens and allowed nationalists to destroy and desecrate the cemetery.
Hungary vs Romania again
The attack was condemned by the Hungarian government, opposition parties Jobbik – Movement for a Better Hungary and Our Home Movement and the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ). Hungarian President János Áder called the incident offensive, illegal and immoral and added that it
violated international agreements.
The Hungarian People’s Party of Transylvania and the Hungarian Civic Party both filed a complaint against unknown persons. Many think in Transylvania that the incident is very similar to what happened in the Black March of 1990 in Marosvásárhely/Târgu Mureș when Romanian nationalists attacked Hungarian civilians demonstrating peacefully for the rights of the Hungarian ethnic community living in Transylvania.
Here you can watch what happened:
Kronika.ro, a Hungarian news outlet of Transylvania wrote on Friday that the commander of the gendarmerie that could not inhibit the clash between Romanian nationalists and Hungarian civilians at Úz valley was Sebastian Cucoș, chief of staff of the unit. Many Hungarian news outlets say that, based on the photos, it seems that
instead of protecting the legal order
he was organising the attack of the Romanian nationalists. Furthermore, he was the commander of the gendarmerie during the Bucharest anti-government protests of August when Romanian football ultras and authorities clashed. Suspicions were raised that he cooperated with the ultras intentionally to provoke a conflict and so be able to use tear gas and nightstick against peacefully demonstrating citizens. An investigation regarding the issue is currently in progress.
Photo: MTI/Veres Nándor
The ministry is to take control
Romanian minister for interior, Carmen Dan, said that the Romanian gendarmerie fulfiled its task because it could hinder possible clashes between Romanians and Hungarians and no graves were desecrated. She added that they regard it as a success that even though both sides mobilised ultras and radicals, nobody got injured. She emphasised without saying names that
certain persons and groups wanted to escalate tensions before the EP elections.
According to MTI, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó and Teodor Melescanu, his Romanian counterpart, had further talks concerning the Úz valley military cemetery, by phone on Monday. A statement from the Hungarian foreign ministry quoted Melescanu as saying that the Romanian prime minister
ordered the Romanian defence ministry to take control over the cemetery.
The statement added that the Hungarian side had acknowledged the decision. Hungarian FM requested that the two defence ministries should start consultations “to restore order in line with bilateral and international obligations” at the cemetery. The Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ) objects the nationalisation of the graveyard and wants the original condition of the cemetery to be restored.
Hunor Kelemen, leader of the alliance, added that there should be a dialogue established between the different parties and made it clear that Codrin Munteanu, secretary general of the Romanian defence ministry is responsible for the tensions. In fact, he was the one who started to sue Transylvanian local governments that placed the Szekler flag in their town halls.
Romanian nationalists broke into and desecrated the WWII cemetery
of Úz valley previous Thursday where Hungarian, German and Austrian soldiers rest. They smashed several wooden crosses that marked the memory of fallen Hungarian heroes and beat up Hungarians protecting the cemetery with flagpoles and rods torn from the fence. Meanwhile, the Romanian gendarmerie did almost nothing even though Romanian foreign minister Teodor Meleșcanu previously promised his Hungarian counterpart that they would do everything to prevent provocations and physical abuse towards local Hungarians.
The Hungarian foreign ministry immediately issued a diplomatic note of protest and summoned the Romanian ambassador to Hungary to account for what had happened but
he refused to comply, citing conflicting orders.
In fact, the cemetery was illegally appropriated earlier this year by the local council of Dărmănești/Dormánfalva which has erected a memorial site for Romanian soldiers fallen in WWII even though there is no evidence that there rest any of them. The Romanian nationalists inaugurated that memorial after their brutal attack on.
