Romania and Hungary signed the Protocol of the 7th session of the Hungarian-Romanian Expert Committee on coordinating the national minorities’ issues. The document signed last Tuesday, July 14, stipulates the need of imperative measures to be taken by Hungary in order to ensure the parliamentary representation of Romanians, but the parties could not agree on Hungarians’ representation in the Romanian local administrative structures.
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The first working session in this year of the co-presidents of the Hungarian-Romanian Expert Committee on coordinating the national minorities’ issues took place Tuesday, July 14 at the MFA headquarters. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss about the unsolved aspects on the agenda and to prepare the signing of a new protocol, informs NewsIn.
Romania was represented at this meeting by Bogdan Aurescu, secretary of state for strategic affairs, who was recently appointed by MFA leadership as co-president of the Committee. Hungary was represented by Ferenc Gemesi, secretary of state for minorities and national policy, Office of the Prime Minister.
The Hungarian-Romanian Expert Committee on coordinating the national minorities’ issues protocol, signed Tuesday evening by the two secretaries of state, includes some important provisions for the Romanians from Hungary.
“The Hungarian part will take measures for ensuring the parliamentary representation of the Romanian minority, as soon as possible and will adopt effective measures in order to avoid including in the structures representing the Romanian minority in Hungary persons who don’t know and don’t promote the Romanian language and the Romanian cultural values”, stated secretary of state Bogdan Aurescu.
Other recommendations refer to monitoring the implementation of the measures for facilitating the border traffic control at the common border, taking into account the perspective of Romania’s adherence to the Schengen space, as well as eliminating the tonnage limitation at the border check points of the common border.
Another protocol’s recommendation refers to the usage of mother tongue in the representative structures, a very important issue for the Romanian representative structures in Hungary; encouraging textbooks’ editing for the Romanian community in Hungary, or renovation of Orthodox churches, chapels or parochial houses from common funds.
Also, the protocol refers to supplying with furniture and equipment the publishing houses for the Romanian publications in Hungary, the financial support for the publications “The Romanian Paper” (“Foaia romaneasca”) and “Cronica”, setting up a museum of Transylvanian history in Buda or building a statue of Andrei Saguna in Jula and supplying with Romanian books the libraries from Hungary.
“The Hungarian party will take measures for encouraging the learning of the Romanian language at levels that will ensure its conveyance to the future generations, according to the protocol”, said Bogdan Aurescu.
Ferenc Gemesi, the Hungarian official, underlined the importance for the Hungarian community in Romania of the education in mother tongue. “I hope that education in mother tongue will be further developed in those localities where it exists”, he said.
The second very important issue for the Hungarian part, indicated by Gemesi, is that the Sapientia University should receive accreditation in order to start functioning. “After it will receive accreditation we will analyze the possibilities for the Romanian party to finance it”, stated the Hungarian official.
Another top problem for the Hungarian part is that of retro ceding properties and the parties revised the results of this process up to this moment. Gemesi encountered some values which are important for the Hungarian community: the building of the Transylvanian Museums’ Society, the “Batthyaneum” library from Alba Iulia and other such aspects of importance for the Hungarian society and church.
Disagreements
On the other hand, despite the open and constructive discussions, the two parties could not agree on all aspects. “There are of course aspects we could not agree on, because we had different points of view. For example, regarding the local administration institutions and the participation of persons belonging to Hungarian minority into these institutions, or aspects regarding the bilingual signs at the Babes-Bolyai University and in those areas where the Hungarian minority represents less than 20% of the population, as stipulated in the Romanian law”, underlined Bogdan Aurescu. (DIVERS - www.divers.ro)