Governance
In December 1991, following Communist leader Nicolae Ceauşescu’s overthrow Romanians approved a new Constitution by referendum. The Constitution defines Romania as ‘a nation state, sovereign, unitary and indivisible’. It guarantees minorities the right ‘to the preservation, development and expression’ of identity, including education in the mother tongue, and affirms the equality of rights and freedom from discrimination. The Constitution additionally provides for deputies appointed by national minorities to be represented in the parliament.
Voters approved a package of amendments to Romania’s Constitution in 2003 that included new legal guarantees for minority rights. Among the provisions, national minorities gained the right to engage government administrators and courts in their native languages. However, some local officials have been slow and grudging in accepting use of minority languages in their dealings with the public.
Minorities are represented at national and local levels. Groups too small to meet the thresholds for broad popular support required to form a political party can opt to build minority organizations that can also field candidates for election. However, Romanian law also sets threshold requirements for their registration, and human rights organizations have criticized these as too stringent. Roma are under-represented at national and regional levels, but recent special provisions have boosted Roma representation at the local level.
Mother-tongue education for minorities is widely available at the primary and secondary school levels, especially for Hungarians. Where minority groups are highly concentrated, it is often also available at university. The government of Hungary established a private Hungarian-language university in 2001 that operates in Transylvania.
Print and broadcast media is likewise available in many minority languages, especially Hungarian and German. In regions where such other groups as Ukrainians, Armenians, Turks and Slovaks are concentrated, local broadcasts in their first languages are often available.
History
Romanians claim descent from the indigenous population of the Carpathian region who were Romanized during the classical period. In the thirteenth century, independent Romanian principalities were founded in Wallachia and Moldavia that followed the Eastern Orthodox rite. These subsequently became vassal states of the Ottoman Empire. During the nineteenth century, Wallachia and Moldavia united to form a common Romanian state that gained recognition as a sovereign principality (later kingdom) in 1878. Transylvania was part of the Kingdom of Hungary from the 11th century, and in 1571 became an autonomous principality under Ottoman suzerainty. In 1711 it became part of the Habsburg Monarchy (Austria-Hungary after 1867) and was joined to Romania after World War I. Bessarabia, formerly a part of Russia, was awarded to Romania after 1918 but was taken by the Soviet Union in 1940. Since 1991 Bessarabia has been a part of the sovereign state of Moldova.
With the acquisition of Transylvania in 1918, Romania inherited an ethnically diverse territory, containing substantial Hungarian, German and other minorities. Hungarians have historically been the dominant social group in Transylvania. Although at the time of Transylvania’s incorporation into Romania in 1918, self-government was promised for the region’s minorities, no such concession was forthcoming. During the interwar period, the Romanian government neglected minorities. During World War II the Axis powers awarded much of Transylvania to Hungary, but Romanian control was re-established after the war. During the war, Jews and Roma were systematically murdered.
The number of Germans has been in steady decline since the interwar period when they were recorded as 761,000-strong (1930 Census). At the end of World War II, the new authorities seized German properties and transported 75,000 Germans to the Soviet Union as forced labour. The Communists permitted many more to emigrate to the Federal Republic of Germany in exchange for hard currency remittances.
Communist rule in Romania was among the harshest in Central and Eastern Europe and resulted in widespread repression of the whole population, although the regime did make concessions to the country’s diversity. In the 1950s, the Communists provided an extensive network of minority-language schools, publications and cultural organizations. Between 1952 and 1968, a Hungarian Autonomous Province functioned in the most compacted area of Hungarian settlement in Transylvania, but its powers of self-rule were only nominal. After 1968, Communist policy moved by degrees towards assimilation. The government merged and reduced minority-language schools into ‘sections’ within Romanian schools. The authorities also reduced the number of subjects which might be taught in minority languages and banned cultural organizations. Nevertheless, even in the late 1980s, Romanian television and radio continued daily transmissions in Hungarian and German.
The Communist regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu was overthrown in 1989 and a democratic state proclaimed. Since then, conditions for minorities gradually improved despite some initial violent inter-ethnic incidents. After the revolution of 1989, Hungarians rapidly asserted their rights and aroused Romanian animosities and in March 1990, inter-ethnic fighting in the Transylvanian city of Targu-Mures left at least six people dead.
From then, however, relations between Romanians and Hungarians in Transylvania have been peaceful. Extremist statements and provocations from right-wing Romanian parties, including the threatened demolition of Hungarian cultural monuments and the publication of racist literature and speeches, have not escalated into violent conflict. However, tensions have persisted for several reasons. Among these are the continued denial of Hungarian demands for territorial autonomy in the two counties where Szekler Hungarians live in great majority in the centre of Romania. The refusal to reinstate the Bolyai University, a Hungarian language public university that was merged with the Romanian Babes University in 1959, added to this tension.
Around 30 organized attacks on Roma settlements by other groups were reported in the period between December 1989 and 1994 including an attack on Roma in the capital Bucharest by striking miners in March 1990. After 1989, more than 100,000 Germans migrated to Germany, with the consequence that a large number of Saxon and Swabian villages became deserted.
In May 1990 the government issued a regulation expanding minority-language education. With considerable financial support from foreign foundations and neighbouring states of national minorities, minority cultural facilities and publications operated freely, and minority-language television and radio broadcasts were extended. In 1993, the government set up a Council for National Minorities to monitor and advise on minority affairs. Increasingly, Romania viewed itself as a candidate for European Union (EU) membership, giving added impetus to minority rights reforms.
In 1991 and again in 1999, Romanian legislators caused an international furore when they observed a minute of silence to commemorate the execution for war crimes of Romania’s Nazi-allied leader, Marshal Ion Antonescu. This was particularly distressing to Romania’s small remaining Jewish population, which remains vulnerable to anti-Semitic incidents. A 2002 government decree prohibited racist, xenophobic and fascist organizations, and banned denial of the Holocaust, including denial of the participation of Romanian officials in its conduct. By 2004, Romanian President Ion Iliescu openly acknowledged in a speech before parliament the full participation of Romania’s regime in perpetrating the Holocaust.
Since Romania’s accession the EU in 2007, minority rights protections have been strengthened through a range of measures. Another consequence is that emigration to other countries has increased rapidly, with some 3.4 million Romanians emigrating between 2007 and 2015 – the second highest emigration rate after Syria. This includes a significant number of Roma who have relocated to France, Italy and other countries to escape poverty and persecution at home, though in many cases they have faced further challenges in the form of evictions, police harassment and racial discrimination.
