2015–2016
ERSTE Foundation Fellowship for Social Research Diasporas, nation states and mainstream societies in Central and Eastern Europe
From national minority to diaspora: Hungarians in Romania, 2000–2015. Matters of population, education, and territory Irina Culic
From national minority to diaspora: Hungarians in Romania, 2000‐2015. Matters of population, education, and territory Irina Culic Babeș‐Bolyai University <irina.culic@socasis.ubbcluj.ro> This research project was developed within the ERSTE Foundation Fellowship for Social Research 2015/2016
Please do not cite without the author’s permission © Irina Culic
Abstract: The paper investigates the transformation of the project of a parallel Hungarian society in Romania during the last fifteen years through the analytical lens offered by the pair concepts of diaspora and national minority. The diaspora is externally oriented towards the kin‐ state, aiming at acquiring its active support and advocacy in the international arena, maintaining the option to “return”, including the right to non‐residential dual citizenship. The national minority is internally oriented as a mobilized political actor on the national scene, struggling for cultural rights, territorial autonomy, and special representation in their native country. Scrutinizing the interaction between Hungarian state’s national policy, Hungarian minority participation in government in Romania, civic and cultural organisation at various local levels, and the international legal regime of minority recognition, the paper shows the tensioned living with both these postures of Hungarians in Romania. It starts with the issue of population, where sheer size, territorial distribution, and the strength of ethno‐cultural identification affect the force and legitimacy of the claims that Hungarians may advance on the national political scene, and determine the chance of maintaining a Hungarian way of life. From here it zooms into the politics of higher education in the Hungarians language in Romania, and the political life of the notion of diaspora for Hungarians in Romania. Keywords: diaspora, national minority, Hungarians in Romania, higher education, population, territory. 1
Introduction: Matters of population. In the new political context opened by the fall of the communist regime in 1989, the leaders of Hungarians in Romania have engaged in a sustained politics of recognition. Resuming the nationalizing process of the Hungarian national minority, they advanced autonomy and self‐ government projects, and consolidated its established institutions ‐ schools, churches, and cultural associations.1
The political voice that has expressed the will of Transylvanian Hungarians in Parliament
along these years is the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (DAHR)2. Its basic goal was the creation of a parallel social and political system, with its own state‐like institutions and a distinct minority life‐world. In its own words, the DAHR “came into being for the purpose of representing the interests and community of Hungarians living in Romania. Organized according to the rules of inner pluralism, the members of the DAHR belong to county/regional organizations, to ideologically conceived platforms and to associated organizations.” As a political party, and as a social frame, the DAHR has advanced these goals since 1996 through participation in government or associated to government, in local administrations, by accessing and controlling state resources in order to strengthen the institutions that reproduce and foster the Hungarian culture, and the Hungarian nation in Romania.
The underlying dimension of its legitimacy and actions is the population in whose name
it is founded. According to the census carried out by the Romanian state in October 2011, Hungarians represent 6.5% of Romania’s 20.12 million stable population, with a count of 1,227,623 persons.3 The number of Hungarians has decreased steadily during the post‐ communist period, as a result of a negative rate of natural increase of the Hungarian population; assimilation, especially through mixed marriages; and international migration, principally to Hungary, but increasingly to other countries as well. Prior to the 1992 census, the Hungarian population in Romania was widely estimated at the figure of 2 million, circulated by the specialized literature produced in Hungary.4 When the actual numbers were published, the DAHR had difficulties to acknowledge that Hungarians totalled only 1.62 million, since one of the pillars of Hungarian politics stood in the claim that size matters. The event also revealed how little was known about Hungarian population demographics in Romania. 2
The figures continued to decrease during the following decade, and the 2002 census
recorded 1.43 million Hungarians, representing 6.6% of the population. This time however, despite the fact that the decline surpassed expert expectations, the Hungarian political elite suitably reacted by announcing a comprehensive strategy for increasing the reproductive potential of the Hungarian population in Romania, which appealed to expertise from social scientists.5 This went hand in hand with the DAHR’s changed strategy from institution building within the Hungarian “ethno‐civil society,” 6 to state‐funding local administration projects: after joining the governing coalition, the DAHR’s politicians also became state functionaries. As a result, the Alliance’s perspective rescaled from an inward‐looking entity, organizing itself parallel to the rest of the society, and looking externally for support at Hungary, supra‐national organizations, and pieces of international legislation, to being a part of the national community in Romania, actively pursuing to transform Romanian public institutions and social relations, to promote the thriving of Hungarians and their local communities. By the time of the 2002 census, the DAHR already had at its disposal a number of studies that had taken Hungarians in Romania as their object of research.7 By employing and commissioning macro‐level research on the social stratification, levels of education, territorial mobility, interethnic marriages of Hungarians, as well as general public opinion barometers and value surveys, the DAHR contributed to produce the Hungarian minority in Romania as an object of governmentality8 for the Hungarian leaders. As such, the task of governing this population acquired primacy over the population itself, so that at times, as we will see in the following, the plans for its government and the population discourse became quite separated from the population itself.
The statistical reproduction of the population through the census functioned rather
positively on the occasion of the 2011 census. The authorities recruited census operators who spoke Hungarian, promoted the census through materials in the Hungarian language,9 and provided a Hungarian version of the guide to fill in the forms. Increased trust in the institution of the census, and the Hungarian leaders’ request to the population to cooperate and to declare themselves Hungarian, rather than Szekler or Csango,10 were also tactically important, since, according to Romanian legislation regarding the use of mother tongue in the public
3
sphere, the Hungarian language may and should be used in the operations and proceedings of local administration units, where Hungarians represent 20% or more of the population.11
At the time of the 2011 census, an impressive number of studies concerning the
Hungarian population in Romania were available.12 Among them were several demographic projections.13 The projections start from the 2002 census figures, and employ rates of fertility, life expectancy, migration, and ethno‐cultural reproduction, by three levels: for all Hungarians, for the 16 counties where the Hungarian population is concentrated, and for 42 micro‐regions where education is provided in the Hungarian language. The projections also estimate figures for the Romanian population. While the prognoses reassure the DAHR that it may still be able to pass the electoral threshold of 5% at the following seven national elections, if it maintains the unified allegiance of Hungarians, they are firmly negative with respect to Hungarians’ prospects of ethno‐cultural reproduction. Focusing on the 19‐24 year old segment, the likely university education population, the authors conclude that its impending considerable decrease will make higher education in the Hungarian language unsustainable, even in the short run.14
This projection is important, because it refers directly to the prospects of cultural
reproduction. It is also a fundamental piece of data that the politics of planning the higher education in the Hungarian language should take into account. I will come back to this later. Devised with a public policy‐making mindset, the studies on the evolution of the Hungarian population aimed to serve primarily the rational planning of the Hungarian language education system, the main institution reproducing the Hungarian ethnicity.15 This brings us to two important aspects of the politics of the Romanian state, and of the Hungarian elite respectively, which will be examined in the next section. First, how and what kind of bilingualism is produced in the system of education in the mother tongue? Second, what is the outcome of the DAHR’s struggles for a separate Hungarian‐language university? Matters of education: struggles for education in the Hungarian language. The DAHR’s sustained efforts to protect, enhance, and control education in the Hungarian language, particularly after it joined the government coalition in 1996, produced significant 4
results with respect to primary and secondary instruction. The 2011 education law16 established a very weak formula of bilingual education, where all subject matters are taught in the mother tongue, except for the “Romanian language and literature”, for which special textbooks are devised to accommodate the minority.17 History and Geography, previously required to be taught in the Romanian language,18 can now be taught also in the mother tongue, using identical syllabi as for the Romanian students, with the provision that place names and Romanian proper names are translated and learned in the Romanian language too.19
These gains now ensure that a Hungarian child may be taught and can learn all subjects
in the Hungarian language, from the preparatory year of elementary school to the senior year of high school. The one subject where no actual advance has taken place is the subject of “Romanian language and literature.” First, because the linguistic objectives of teaching minority children the Romanian language remain detached from the social linguistic context of most Hungarians, for whom the state language is relatively absent from everyday communication.20 Romanian is taught primarily as an object of culture, a collection of artistic achievements and grammatical structures, symbol of national unity and historical continuity. The function of linguistic socialisation, by emphasizing everyday expression and vocabulary that will allow children to use the language in public space, is less present. Second, because despite the possibility to use special textbooks for this subject, the expected outcome is the same for Romanian and minority children ‐ they all have to pass the same high‐school graduation examination in the “Romanian language and literature.” Besides poor success rates by Hungarian children, which affects their further education possibilities, the inability to communicate in Romanian in social contexts generates discomfort and tensions.21
In localities where Hungarians do not hold demographic domination or majority in terms
of size of the ethnic group, many Hungarian parents decide to take their children to schools where the instruction is provided in the Romanian language, even if instruction in the Hungarian language is available and/or affordable. Based on ethnographic data, the explanation they give for their choice almost always bears a master argument: command of Romanian language, which will be acquired by learning in a Romanian language school, brings economic advantage at the same time as it fulfils a moral obligation for living in Romania.22 Moreover, the 5
younger generation, those demographic segments of secondary level age, generally consider that there are more things in common that they share with their Romanian peers, than those that separate them. Unless clear design and concerted efforts are made, the structural and interactional conditions of the family may lead to the enrolment of the child in a Romanian school. Factors such as the convenience of the school in terms of distance from home and entry conditions, patterns of friendship, play, and socialisation with Romanian children, or identity design for the child influence the choice of school.
DAHR was pointedly unsuccessful with respect to higher education in the Hungarian
language. It was not able to achieve its major symbolic goal, the establishment of a separate Hungarian‐language state university, despite implacable negotiations while in government between 1996 and 2000. Soon after getting into office, the coalition adopted an emergency ordinance to change the law of education.23 The ordinance attended to all the demands raised by the DAHR concerning the public provision of education in minority language: classes in the minority language to be set up in all localities wherever necessary; all subjects to be possible to be taught in the minority language, by request; higher education colleges, faculties, and academic institutions in the minority language to be possible to be set up.24 The ordinance was heatedly debated in the Parliament, substantially amended to reverse the DAHR’s proposals by the Senate, and almost entirely rejected by the Chamber of Deputies. After several threats to leave the coalition because of dissatisfaction with this matter,25 an odd compromise was brought about by the Prime Minister in 1998, with the set up of a Hungarian‐German university, the Petőfi‐Schiller University.26 This decision was subsequently rejected by the Bucharest Court of Justice. This failed and odd attempt at establishing a public Hungarian university in Romania had the side effect of generating animated discussions on the concept of multiculturalism, and the redefinition of Babeș‐Bolyai University in Cluj‐Napoca as a multicultural university.27 In broad lines, this meant the organisation (or re‐organisation, where they already existed) of autonomous, parallel lines of study in the Hungarian and German languages, next to the Romanian ones, and their representation in the decision‐making bodies of the University at all levels. The multicultural character and organisation of Babeș‐Bolyai University in Cluj‐Napoca was shaped by the involvement of the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities in the 6
second part of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s.28 He recommended active strategic planning of multiculturalism, autonomy in decision‐making for the lines of study and programs in the Hungarian and German languages, and their guaranteed representation in the leading bodies of the university. The various subsequent changes in the law of education also shaped the multicultural character of the university, in terms of organisation principles and higher coefficient of financing for places in the Hungarian and German languages.
When the law of education was finally amended in 1999,29 the DAHR’s demands were
only half met. It provided the possibility to establish private universities in minority languages. In the academic year 2001‐2002, the first private Hungarian language university in Romania started its courses for nine specialisations, taught at three colleges, in Miercurea‐Ciuc, Târgu‐ Mureș, and Cluj‐Napoca.30 More matters of education: the contradictions and paradoxes of higher education in the Hungarian language in Romania. The parallel functioning of Hungarian lines of study at Babeș‐Bolyai University (from now on UBB), and of the faculties at the three colleges of the Sapientia Hungarian University in Transylvania (from now on: Sapientia), represent a good strategic research site from where to observe the tensions that fracture the Hungarian academic elite in Transylvania, a case of what I call, paraphrasing Rogers Brubaker, intra‐ethnic unmixing. 31 The two institutions, which seem to have been initially poised to work together to provide quality education, a stimulating research environment, and strong moral standards for the Hungarian youth, grew very soon apart and locked in silent competition.32
Sapientia started off from the very beginning by reclaiming, “the several‐century legacy
of higher education in Transylvania”. If the Romanian official name is simply Universitatea Sapientia, the Hungarian name, and its English translation, assert the mission taken upon itself: Sapientia Hungarian University in Transylvania (Sapientia Erdélyi Magyar Tudományegyetem). UBB has naturally claimed this legacy for itself, as the oldest university in Romania, having established a tortuous, painful, but victorious genealogy that goes back to the Jesuit college 7
established in 1581 by István Báthory. At the start there was an unwritten understanding that Sapientia will cover all the subjects that are not provided in the Hungarian language by public universities, in particular by UBB, the main provider of higher education in the Hungarian language, alongside the much smaller specialized University of Arts in Târgu Mureş, and the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Târgu Mureş;33 and that it would refrain from challenging the programs that went well at UBB. It was also designed to develop in a regionally balanced way, organized in a structure of three colleges, set up in three important Transylvanian cities: Miercurea Ciuc (Faculty of Economic and Human Sciences, and Faculty of Technical and Social Sciences), Cluj‐Napoca (Faculty of Sciences and Arts), Târgu Mureş (Faculty of Technical and Human Sciences).
The two institutions worked together at setting the foundations of Sapientia. UBB
professors who had held executive experience, knowledge of the legal system for higher education in Romania, and connections at the Ministry of Education, helped setting up programs of study at Sapientia. They assisted with the teaching, with the accreditation documentation and accreditation process, and with introducing new disciplines in the national register of specialisations, where they did not exist. UBB accepted all Sapientia students to defend their graduation examination within its framework, so that they could receive the degree, for the whole period Sapientia was not accredited and functioned only conditionally.
But from the very beginning there had existed overlaps in the programs of instruction
provided, which grew over time. Apart from technical disciplines, which do not exist at UBB, and are taught at the Technical Universities in Bucharest and in the main cities of Romania, various social sciences and humanities programs paralleled similar programs at UBB.34 For a while, this cohabitation was apparently profitable for both institutions, as UBB received the fees paid by the Sapientia undergraduates to be allowed to sit the graduation examination; and as Sapientia undergraduates continued their studies at the Master’s programs in Hungarian language at UBB.
This cosy arrangement ended soon, with the proud gradual achievement of
accreditation of its programs and the institutional accreditation by Sapientia;35 Sapientia’s request that its faculty renounce their secondary (or primary) positions at other universities, 8
and by UBB new Charter’s regulation that forbids its faculty to teach at competing universities without Senate’s approval to do so.36 This unfolded at the same time that the cohorts of prospective students dwindled, as a result of the diminished number of births in the years following the change of regime in 1989; and of the low rate of Hungarian pupils who passed the high school final examination, the Bacalaureat, which conditions admission to the university in Romania.
The silent competition grew even stronger as the two institutions battled for
increasingly smaller number of students. This was made significantly more strained by the acts and intervention of the government of Hungary, mainly through its politics of differential acknowledgment and financing of the higher education in the Hungarian language in Romania. During the socialist government, Hungarian language higher education at UBB has been supported financially through sponsoring various activities of the faculty: organisation of conferences, professional student colleges and faculty‐student research projects, paying for invited lecturers from Hungary to deliver courses. UBB used to receive approximately 70 million HUF (250,000 Euro) in this way. To understand the figures, a Faculty which has about 1,800 students and 20 undergraduate and graduate programs has an overall budget ‐ governmental and own sources ‐ of about 750,000 Euro). The money was given directly or through competition to the Hungarian University Federation in Cluj‐Napoca [KMEI], an arch organisation of Faculty teaching at UBB and their organisations, such as invisible or professional colleges. The federation was founded by the associations and the foundations that worked as the background institutions for the departments of the Hungarian line at the UBB, and its aim is to support the academic activities at BBU.37 Only faculty teaching at UBB and their organisations are part of this Federation, which is completely separated from Hungarians teaching at Sapientia, and the other private Hungarian university, the Christian University Partium, in Oradea.
With the advent of the present government of Hungary of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán,
this was ceased, and the activities by which the Hungarian faculty at UBB maintained a parallel system of research, teaching, and functioning had to be reorganized. They mainly realigned back on the budget of the Faculties, and attempted to draw more students from Hungary 9
proper. The moment is extremely difficult, as the number of Romanian students also diminishes, as a result of similar demographic and social‐economic processes. The financial strain on most Faculties is critical, with relative diminishing budgeting per student capita from the Romanian government,38 and diminished financial resources as a result of decreased numbers of student cohorts. In this context, for the majority of Faculties at UBB, the weight of the Hungarian lines of study on Faculties’ budget is noticeable and tends to produce antagonism between faculty at the Romanian and Hungarian lines of study. The doubling of these programs by Sapientia makes the situation even less comprehensible by the Romanian faculty, which is found in the situation of being responsible for financing the Hungarian lines of study at UBB. Figure 1. Evolution of the total number of students in public and private universities in Romania, 2007‐2014. (Source: Calculated by author from The National Council for the Financing of Higher Education, Romania, Annual Public Report 2014, June 2015, p. 14). 1000000 900000 800000 700000 600000 Year
500000
No. students
400000 300000 200000
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996
1995
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1991
0
1990
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10
Table 1. Numbers of students enrolled in all forms of university education at public universities. (Source: The National Council for the Financing of Higher Education, Romania, Annual Public Report 2014, June 2015, p. 24). Year Total Bachelor Master’s PhD Students 2014 461.582 346.493 98.124 16.965 2013 479.876 360.588 100.995 18.293 2012 520.853 391.170 107.828 21.855 2011 576.290 426.435 123.973 25.882 2010 616.506 447.660 139.211 29.635 2009 624.654 473.393 120.673 30.588 2008 650.247 525.880 91.825 32.542 2007 644.807 521.633 89.488 33.686
Table 2. Babeș‐Bolyai University, numbers of Hungarian students by language of the programs of study, Bachelor level, four academic years, 2012‐2016. Total students UBB does not include foreign citizens. (Source: author’s calculations from official university data) Bachelor level Total Hungar R Total Hungar M Total Hungar Other Total Hungarians Total students UBB Romanian citizens
2012‐13 1413 4032 180 5625
2013‐14 1192 3793 167 5152
2014‐15 1083 3654 169 4906
2015‐16 957 3946 164 5067
27,888
25,934
25,101
27,059
Table 3. Babeș‐Bolyai University, numbers of Hungarian students by language of the programs of study, Master’s level, four academic years, 2012‐2016. Total students UBB does not include foreign citizens. Master’s level Total Hungar R Total Hungar M Total Hungar Other Total Hungarians Total students UBB Romanian citizens
2012‐13 507 769 138 1414
2013‐14 395 734 94 1223
2014‐15 406 767 111 1284
2015‐16 334 734 136 1204
8410
8087
7823
7575
11
Table 4. Babeș‐Bolyai University, numbers of Hungarian students by language of the programs of study, Bachelor level, four academic years, 2012‐2016. Percentages from Total Hungarians. Bachelor level Total Hungar R Total Hungar M Total Hungar Other Total Hungarians % Hungarians UBB Romanian citizens
2012‐13 25.12% 71.68% 3.2% 100%
2013‐14 23.14% 73.62% 3.24% 100%
2014‐15 22.08% 74.48% 3.44% 100%
2015‐16 18.89% 77.88% 3.24% 100%
20.16%
19.86%
19.54%
18.72%
Table 5. Babeș‐Bolyai University, numbers of Hungarian students by language of the programs of study, Master’s level, four academic years, 2012‐2016. Percentages from Total Hungarians. Master’s level Total Hungar R Total Hungar M Total Hungar Other Total Hungarians % Hungarians UBB Romanian citizens
2012‐13 35.86% 54.38% 9.76% 100%
2013‐14 32.30% 60.02% 7.69% 100%
2014‐15 31.62% 59.74% 8.64% 100%
2015‐16 27.74% 60.96% 11.30% 100%
16.81%
15.12%
16.41%
15.89%
Sapientia is also confronted with the diminishing number of students. Its peak was hit in
2007, with a declared number of a total of 2224 students, which decreased in the following years, so that since 2013 these numbers are not published anymore on the university website. More abrupt was the fall in the number of its graduates, which decreased from 607 in 2008 to 301 in 2012, the last year for which this information is publicly available on Sapientia’s website. Despite this, Sapientia seems to be following an expansion plan, which will require a thorough development strategy in the future, hardly supported by the present trends sketched above. As recently as October 2013, Sapientia inaugurated its new lavish Cluj‐Napoca building, which cost 5 million Euro.39 This is made possible by the support of the Hungarian government, which paid fully for this building and has been sponsoring with large amounts of money Sapientia, and the other smaller private Hungarian language university in Romania, the Christian University Partium in Oradea.40 UBB does not receive any recognition or acknowledgment by the Viktor Orbán government, and is consequently ignored in the distribution of funds for higher 12
education in the Hungarian language in Romania. The historical, traditional, and internationally renowned scholarship at UBB are effaced, and so is the quality of the education in the Hungarian language at UBB, and the struggles to maintain and develop it. UBB is portrayed as a place of Romanianisation, despite the fact that it attracts almost six times more students of Hungarian ethnicity than Sapientia.
This intra‐ethnic unmixing is met with more paradox. From the total of students of
Hungarian ethnicity studying at UBB, about 20% of students at the bachelor level, and about 30% of students at the master’s level are enrolled in programs in the Romanian language (and other languages), despite the fact that for most there exist Hungarian lines of study (see Tables 2‐5). Moreover, as the programs of study in the Hungarian language struggle to survive, a number of them are now aiming to fill their allocated places with Hungarian citizens, so that they bring to their Faculty the money given by the government for each student capita. For example, out of the 166 enrolled students at undergraduate level at the Faculty of Sociology and Social Work at UBB in 2015‐16, at the Hungarian language line of study, 23 are Hungarian citizens (and non‐dual citizens). It is thus a long way gone from the struggles of the 1990s to establish public higher education in the Hungarian language in Romania, to the situation where the Hungarian citizens are instructed in Romanian public universities on Romanian government money.
The present situation signals the deterioration of Hungarian intellectual elite formation,
intra‐ethnic division, and a certain level of enclavisation. While the odds that the structural context that supports Sapientia may change are high, and this may come with the change of government in Hungary, the general context that governs higher education in Romania, and everywhere else as well, marked by under‐financing and commodification, is not likely to change soon. Matters of territory: minority politics, internal divisions, and the autonomy project. If the Hungarian state has significantly interfered with the life of the Hungarian intellectual elite in Romania by taking sides and actions within the field of higher education, affecting indirectly 13
the chances of ethno‐cultural thriving of the Hungarian society in its native land, it also tried to unsettle its political projects, in a way that would dismantle the political elite of Transylvanians as the main source of centralisation and leadership for the Hungarians ethnics in Romania. The following section follows this transformation.
Geography bestows Kárpát‐medence, the Carpathian Basin, upon the Hungarian
discourse of the nation. This geo‐morphological unit supplies a mould for the territory dismantled at Trianon. Its physicality and materiality supports the mental space of Greater Hungary, the repertoire of representations of the thousand year old Kingdom of Hungary.41 The rough borders of the geographical unit are easily approximated in imagination with the former borders of Hungary before Trianon. Both function metonymically as a historical reference for the state’s golden period at the turn of the twentieth century. The shape of Greater Hungary is as easily recognizable as the Crown of Saint Stephen, situated on top of Hungary’s coat of arms. On maps, stickers, key rings, pins, it is ubiquitous in the space of material objects, as much as it is inscribed in the minds of Hungarians.
The Carpathian Basin, as an encompassing frame, is continuously remade through
representing and imagining it as the natural unit of Hungarians, the nation’s homeland. It is done so by ample sociological research programs that set the boundaries of their research object at the Carpathian Basin.42 It was also being done by Hungary’s policy regarding Hungarian minorities abroad, which took this geographic space as reference for its kin‐state policies. The Status Law,43 adopted by the Hungarian Parliament on 19 June 2001 and applied since 1 January 2002, addressed Hungarian ethnics in the Carpathian Basin only (all neighbouring countries except for Austria), and aimed to give a legal‐symbolic, extra‐territorial structure to the Hungarian nation scattered in the Carpathian Basin.44
Hungary’s actions however were deployed in a more intricate field of allegiance and
identification than the space of bilateral state relations, supervised by European and international bodies of governance. The structuring force of this field is given by what Zoltán Kántor identifies as the nationalizing process of the Hungarian national minority.45 Once part of the dominant nation within a strongly nationalizing state, Hungarians in Romania had become, after Trianon, a national minority in another strongly nationalizing state.46 The nation‐building 14
process of this fragment of the Hungarian nation had nevertheless continued, amounting, in these new circumstances, to struggles for autonomy and self‐government, and the preservation of its established institutions ‐ schools, churches, and cultural associations.47 In the political context opened by the fall of the communist regime in 1989, this process has been resumed. The DAHR represented the largely unchallenged actor enacting the basic goals of “the creation of a parallel social and political system,” “institutions that resemble those of a state […] [and] the establishment of a minority ‘life‐world’,” and the “attempt to transform the political structure of the state and struggle for political representation on state level.”48 All these are favoured by the liberal principles of decentralization, subsidiarity, and freedom of association, and the principles of human rights, which were supported by the DAHR. In the first part of the 1990s, which was a period of uncertainty, transformation, and resurgence of ethno‐ nationalism, the values underlying DAHR politics would have likely situated it alongside the opposition parties. But its main point on the agenda for the first two legislative terms (1990‐ 1996), administrative and institutional autonomy for ethnic minorities,49 based on the recognition of the Hungarian minority as a collective entity subject to rights,50 made it an uncomfortable partner.51
The DAHR’s cooptation into government after the 1996 elections, strategic for
Romania’s endeavour to European and NATO accession,52 led to a drop of autonomy demands, and a more focused activity on achieving specific goals: increased decentralization, the use of minority languages in local administration, separate education in minority languages at all levels.53 DAHR representatives in government and in the legislature subordinated the edification of Hungarian independent institutions to “the creation of governmental structures serving the management of minority issues”.54 This trade‐off was heavily criticized by the radical fraction of the DAHR, which contrasted the politics of compromise followed by the DAHR in government, to the original platform of the alliance, and also accused the political elite of having passed over democratic decision‐making procedures within the DAHR when accepting to enter the coalition.55
In 2004, Hungarian voters invalidated a referendum on granting external citizenship to
Hungarian ethnics in neighbouring countries.56 The political process leading to the referendum 15
emphasized the growing divide within Hungarian politics. It also laid open even more the mutual roles the Hungarian government and the party of Hungarians in Romania play in each other’s political strategies, and the conflicting tactics they may follow in upholding the interests of the Hungarian minority in Romania.
In 2010, Hungary introduced Act XLIV of 2010, amending Act LV of 1993 on the
Hungarian Nationality. It offers preferential naturalization to non‐Hungarian citizens who have an ancestor who was a Hungarian citizen or whose origin from Hungary is probable, and whose Hungarian language knowledge is proven. This option for naturalization does not require residence in Hungary, means of subsistence in Hungary, or passing a test on knowledge of the Constitution. Hungary’s move generated a severe diplomatic conflict with Slovakia, which amended its citizenship law the same day, stipulating that any Slovak citizen voluntarily acquiring the citizenship of a foreign country would be deprived of the Slovak citizenship.57 Romania remained impassive.
The Romanian political field is presently structured by petty party politics, unfolding
against a background of opportunistic neo‐liberalisation. In this context, the resurgence of autonomy projects by radical Hungarian forces is practically treated alternatively as contingent and marginal. The DAHR itself is challenged by the Hungarian Civic Party,58 and the Hungarian People's Party in Transylvania.59 The Hungarian Civic Party, formed in 2008 by the Hungarian Civic Union based in the Szeklerland,60 had challenged the DAHR locally with some success in the 2004 and 2008 elections, and decided to withdraw from the 2012 elections, to avoid the presence of three Hungarian parties competing for the vote of Hungarians. The Hungarian People's Party in Transylvania ,61set up in 2011 by the National Council of Hungarians in Transylvania, received almost 60,000 votes at the 2012 elections, totalling less than one percent of the Romanian electorate. The DAHR barely passed the 5% threshold.62
Back in opposition, the DAHR has revived the autonomy project, which is strongly
supported by the other two Hungarian parties, and by the present government of Hungary.63 This point of confluence concerns the Szeklerland region. Situated right in the center of Romania, it comprises the medieval Szekler Seats, self‐governing territorial units of the Transylvanian Szeklers during medieval times. Historically they enjoyed substantial, though 16
variable, autonomy, in exchange for military service within the Kingdom of Hungary, the Principality of Transylvania, and the Habsburg Empire. After the Austro‐Hungarian Compromise of 1867, it became integrated into the Hungarian system of counties, and its autonomy came to an end. During the early communist regime in Romania, there was introduced a form of local autonomy in Szeklerland, with the establishment of the Hungarian Autonomous Region by the new Constitution of Romania in 1952.64 The administrative reform of 1960 redrew the borders of the Region so that the proportion of Hungarians decreased from 77.2% to 62.2%. It was abolished altogether eight years later. The present mobilization for an autonomous Szeklerland65 is related to Romanian government’s most recent plan (2013) for an administrative reorganization of the country into larger regions ‐ an intermittent initiative during the last decade. Given the overwhelming resistance of all Romanian leaders to any form of ethnic‐based territorial self‐government, the prospect of an administrative reform represents a threat for Hungarians, as it is expected that the counties where Hungarians are the majority will be incorporated into a larger unit.
Szeklerland also has come to epitomize the tension in the present “Hungarian‐
Hungarian relations”.66 Returned to power in 2010, the national conservative Federation of Young Democrats‐Hungarian Civic Alliance (Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége‐Magyar Polgári Szövetség, FIDESZ), revamped the national policy of the previous socialist governments. The change is inscribed in the new 2011 Constitution,67 where the old Article 6(3) was replaced with the more assertive Article D: “Bearing in mind that there is one single Hungarian nation that belongs together, Hungary shall bear responsibility for the fate of Hungarians living beyond its borders, and shall facilitate the survival and development of their communities; it shall support their efforts to preserve their Hungarian identity, the assertion of their individual and collective rights, the establishment of their community self‐governments, and their prosperity in their native lands, and shall promote their cooperation with each other and with Hungary.” One of the notions used by FIDESZ’s national policy is that of szorványmagyarság, the Hungarian diaspora, by which Budapest claims itself as symbolic motherland, orchestrating the politics of survival of the Hungarian minorities in neighbouring countries. This collides with the notion of self‐determination practiced by Transylvanian Hungarians, which relates to both the Romanian 17
government, and the Hungarian government. FIDESZ was accused by DAHR leaders of creating dissensions within the party before its internal elections in 2011. Before the 2012 general elections, FIDESZ extended its support for the radical Hungarian parties in Romania, while DAHR’s president affirmed his party’s independence from the government party in Hungary. The general message transmitted by the present Hungarian government is that Hungarians must look for solutions not at Bucharest, not at their representatives in Romania, but at Budapest, and at the political leaders in Budapest.
In this context, the DAHR falls back on the historical notion of szorvány, referring to the
areas in Southern Transylvania and the Transylvanian Plain, where Hungarians are so dispersed, that their assimilation is imminent. Szeklerland can be envisaged as an “internal motherland” ‐ instead of Hungary ‐ meant to offer more energetic support through the work of cultural associations for the scattered Hungarians.68 The threat of assimilation and the representation it generates is very much inscribed in the worldview of the Hungarians in Romania. Talking about a way to portray the Hungarian society in Romania in the modern paradigm of states, Tamás Kiss appeals to an “ethnic map of Transylvania, on which only the Hungarians are represented. The map will have darker and lighter shades, according to the density of the Hungarian population, respectively there will also be uninhabited, blank areas.”69 Within this imaginary, the Szeklarland and its counties, the only region in Romania where Hungarians constitute a large and compact majority, and where the local administration is dominated by Hungarians, signifies the vital organ of the separate body of the Hungarian nation across borders.
Asked if Transylvanian/ Romanian Hungarians belonged to the Romanian nation, the
majority of Hungarians answer affirmatively.70 The vast majority of Hungarians declare Transylvania or Romania as their country.71 At the same time, according to Hungarian officials, the number of Hungarians from Romania who have asked for and received Hungarian non‐ residential citizenship surpasses 500,000, and over 90,000 of them registered to vote in the oncoming elections in Hungary, in spring 2014.72 Acquiring Hungarian citizenship is largely a symbolic gesture, a way of re‐affirming the Hungarian identity. Resisting it signifies even more the pride of being a Hungarian: Hungarians from Transylvania feel that they do not need a Certificate of Hungarian or Hungarian citizenship to prove that they are Hungarians.73 18
Conclusion Hungarians from Romania came out of the communist period with their traditional institutions partly destroyed, but sharing a strong national imaginary that glued their community together. The “imagined community” was structured by the resistance against communist repression, represented as repression of the state against the Hungarian community, and by the restored relation to the kin‐state, symbolizing the unified Hungarian nation.74 Mobilized politically through the framework provided by the DAHR, Hungarians put forward strong demands for recognition. In the fluid transitional context, a form of consociationalism seemed attainable, due to its significant size and territorial distribution. Backed by the first post‐communist Hungarian government, the DAHR consistently advanced claims for recognition as an autochtonous national minority based on collective rights. It struggled to obtain official status for the Hungarian language, cultural autonomy, a separate system of education in the Hungarian language, and variable projects of territorial autonomy.
The analysis captured several important instances of these struggles, viewed along the
related dimensions of population, education, and territory. The many scales and governmentalities that articulate the Hungarian society in Romania do not seem to stabilize in a homogeneous whole. The scattered Hungarian nation lives alongside multiple ways of being Hungarian. These practical ways, however, are framed by a number of characteristics of the discourse of the nation. One is the lack of hybridity, the impossibility of being a hyphenated Hungarian. A second one is the authenticity of the Hungarians in Romania, in fact, of the Szeklers, keepers of the primordial freedom and pride. And finally, the metaphor of the container map representing Hungarians as colour smudges on a white background, is refracted in how Hungarianness is lived,75 and what this means for a representing political party. Kántor and Bárdi’s76 capture this expressively in their comprehensive analysis of the first office of the DAHR in the government coalition: “we must face the basic fact that very different interests are articulated in places where Hungarians live in majority than in those where they are in a minority. All the programmes of the DAHR to date and the knowledge base of its apparatus 19
were prepared for the latter situation. In areas where Hungarians form a uniform (pure) ethnic block or where they live in majority, issues of modernisation rather than inter‐ethnic problems are in the focus of attention. For these issues, however, the DAHR apparatus has been unable to find more up to date and more efficient solutions than the usual Romanian ones.”
The status of the “Hungarian society in Romania” was continuously re‐made and re‐
positioned by successive configurations of governments in Hungary and Romania, in interaction with the network of cross‐border Hungarian associations, political organisations of the Hungarian minority in Romania, and the European and international political, legal, and financial actors. It was also shaped by the cooption of DAHR in government in 1996, and by the demographic dynamics. This paper showed how the Hungarian society in Romania is fractured, as the way it functions at the same time as political project, historical reference, cultural product, and practical social reality is tensioned, and contested. 1
István Horváth, “Facilitating Conflict Transformation: Implementation of the Recommendations of the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities in Romania, 1993-2001” (Center for OSCE Research Working Paper No. 8, Hamburg: CORE, 2002; Zoltán Kántor and Nándor Bárdi, “The Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (DAHR) in the Government of Romania from 1996 to 2000,” Regio - Minorities, Politics, Society Vol. 1/2002 (2002); Zoltán Kántor, “Nationalizing Minorities and Homeland Politics: The Case of the Hungarians in Romania,” In Balázs Trencsényi et al. (eds), Nation-Building and Contested Identities : Romanian and Hungarian Case Studies (Budapest: Regio Books, 2001). 2 The original Hungarian name of the alliance is Romániai Magyar Demokrata Szövetség (RMDSZ). The Romanian language version is Uniunea Democrată Maghiară din România (UDMR). 3 Institutul Național de Statistică (National Institute for Statistics), Rezultate definitive ale Recensământului Populaţiei şi al Locuinţelor – 2011 (caracteristici demografice ale populaţiei) (Final results of the Population and Dwelling Census - 2011 [Demographic characteristics of the population]) (4 July 2013), at www.recensamantromania.ro (accessed on 30 June 2015). The figures for the ethnic distribution count only the valid responses, which represented 93.8% of the total. The census has been severely criticized for lack of professionalism in conception, preparation, and fulfillment. It was corrected partially based on various official records, by the National Institute for Statistics. 4 Tamás Kiss, Perspectivă administrativă? O analiză comparativă a discursului demografic maghiar din România (Administrative Perspective? A comparative analysis of the Hungarian demographic discourse in Romania ) (ClujNapoca: Editura ISPMN & Kriterion, 2009), p. 10. 5 Ibid., pp. 13-14. Kiss reproduces a large fragment of the 2003 DAHR Seventh Congress Resolution which reemphasized this commitment. 6 The term “ethno-civil society” was used by Zoltán Kántor to refer to the ethnically organized political community of Hungarians in Romania, or to any nation-building or nationalizing national minority. See Zoltán Kántor, “Nationalizing Minorities and Homeland Politics: The Case of the Hungarians in Romania,” In Balázs Trencsényi et al. (eds), Nation-Building and Contested Identities : Romanian and Hungarian Case Studies (Budapest: Regio Books, 2001), p. 256. 7 Among the most important were the surveys The Carpathian Basin Project, 1997-2000, led by the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, in partnership with the Márai Sándor Foundation (Slovakia), Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, ERCOMER (The Netherlands), and ISIG (Italy), which investigated inter-ethnic relations in Romania, Slovakia, and Hungary, see Irina Culic, István Horváth, Marius Lazăr, and Magyari Nándor László, Românii şi
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maghiarii în tranziţia postcomunistă. Imagini mentale şi relaţii interetnice în Transilvania (Romanians and Hungarians in the Post-communist Transition. Mental Representations and Interethnic Relations in Transylvania), Cluj-Napoca: CCRIT, 1998; and Ethnobarometer, carried out by the Center for Interethnic Relations (CCRIT) in 2000, see also Salat and Năstasă, Relaţii interetnice. Both surveys used representative samples of Romanians and Hungarians in Romania, research instruments (questionnaires) in Romanian and Hungarian, and employed the ethnic distribution ratio in the locality as an explanatory variable. 8 Michel Foucault, “Governmentality,” in Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (eds), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 87–104. Translated by Rosi Braidotti and revised by Colin Gordon. 9 Angela Bârsan, “Recensământul din 2011 va conţine elemente de bilingvism” (The 2011 census will include elements of bilingualism), Radio România (7 July 2011), at http://www.politicaromaneasca.ro/recensamantul_din_2011_va_contine_elemente_de_bilingvism-5218 (accessed on 30 June 2015). 10 Petruţa Smântână, “UDMR recomandă secuilor şi ceangăilor să se declare maghiari” (DAHR recommends Szeklers and Csangos to declare themselves Hungarian), Radio România (12 May 2011), at http://www.politicaromaneasca.ro/udmr_recomanda_secuilor_si_ceangailor_sa_se_declare_maghiari-4418 (accessed on 30 June 2015). 11 These two big concerns of demographic decline and the fading of cultural attachment can take more drastic forms, in line with the politics of internal restrictions and external protections that national minorities may pursue for selfpreservation. Such is the appeal published in the city of Baia Mare by the local newspaper Bányavidéki Új Szó on 8 June 2012, Új kiáltó szó. A nagybányai és bányavidéki magyarságért! [The new voice that screams. For the Hungarians in the Baia Mare region], recalling Kós Károly’s 1921 manifesto, Kiáltó Szó [The crying voice], appealing for Hungarian active resistance from within the legal structures of the Romanian state. Signed by major local representatives of the Church, members of the political elite, and leaders of civic organisations, it warns about the contagious disease spreading among Hungarian intellectuals, whose symptoms are the proliferation of mixed marriages, the rejection of education in the mother tongue, the exile, the blending with the majority population, and lethargy. Addressed to parents, youth, and teachers, the call urges them to stop mingling with Romanians and partake in their activities and organisations, and to turn with renewed vigour towards their own ethnic community and institutions. 12 See the publications and integrated data bases generated by the Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities (ISPMN), http://www.ispmn.gov.ro/, led by one of the most important Hungarian sociologists in Romania, István Horváth, and by the Ethnocultural Diversity Resource Center, http://www.edrc.ro/publications.jsp, as well as the journal edited by Liga Pro Europa, Altera, published between 1995-2007, the journal Magyar Kisebbség (1995-present date), published by the Jakabffy Elemér Alapítvány, and the professional journal of the Hungarian Department of Sociology at Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Erdélyi Társadalom. 13 István Csata and Tamás Kiss, Népesedési perspektívák. Az erdélyi magyar népesség regionálisan tagolt előreszámítása húsz és harminc éves időtávra (Population Perspectives. Twenty- and thirty-year projections of the Hungarian population in Transylvania, by region) (Cluj-Napoca: Kriterion, 2007), and for a Romanian and English shorter version, Tamás Kiss and István Csata, “Evoluția populației maghiare din România. Rezultate şi probleme metodologice / Evolution of the Hungarian population from Romania. Results and methodological problems,” Working Papers in Romanian Minority Studies, No. 1 (ISPMN: Cluj-Napoca, 2008). 14 Kiss and Csata, “Evoluția populației maghiare,” pp. 31, 64. 15 Kiss and Csata, “Evoluția populației maghiare,” pp. 3, 37. 16 Law 1/2011, on National Education (5 January 2011). 17 See Article 46. 18 Until 1999, when the previous law of education, Law 84/1995, on Education (28 June 1995), had been amended to allow History and Geography be taught in the mother tongue at primary level, but not at secondary level. See Law 151/1999 (3 August 1999), to approve the Emergency Ordinance 36/1997 to change and complete the law of education, Law 84/1995. 19 The choice of these two subjects, as well as their contents, submitted the Hungarian children to an identity discourse suffused with ethnonational tones that they could not identify with, and that contradicted other instances of their socialisation. See István Horváth and Marius Lazăr, “Manualul de istorie și minoritățile. Probleme principiale și propuneri de reconsiderare” (The History textbook and minorities. Issues of principle and revision proposals,” in Lucian Năstasă (ed.), Studii istorice româno-maghiare (Iași: Fundația Academică A.D. Xenopol), pp. 265-272.
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For a comprehensive analysis see István Horváth, “O evaluare a politicilor de producere a bilingvismului minoritar din România. Către o nouă problematizare” (Assessment of the politics of producing minority bilingualism in Romania. Towards a new problematisation), in István Horváth and Erika Maria Tódor (eds), O evaluare a politicilor de producere a bilingvismului (Cluj-Napoca: Editura Limes-ISPMN, 2008), pp. 37-59. 21 See the collection of studies in Horváth and Tódor (eds), O evaluare a politicilor. 22 See also Máthé Réka Zsuzsánna, “Education Beyond Boundaries. Case Study of Vocational School of Szilágysomlyó”. Paper presented at The 4th Transylvanian Political Science Conference, 28-29 May 2015, held at Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, in Cluj-Napoca, under the call “The „triadic nexus” at work. The impact of kin-state policies and nationalizing state policies on national minorities”. 23 Emergency Ordinance 36/1997 (10 July 1997), to change and complete the law of education, Law 84/1995. 24 Articles 8, 120, 122, 123. 25 Political scientist Gabriel Andreescu likened the dynamics of these moves to a Russian roulette. See Gabriel Andreescu, Ruleta. Români și maghiari, 1990-2000 (The Roulette. Romanians and Hungarians, 1990-2000) (Iași: Polirom, 2001). 26 Governmental Decree 687/1998 (1 October 1998). 27 For an account of the debates, see István Horváth, “Facilitating Conflict Transformation: Implementation of the Recommendations of the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities in Romania, 1993-2001” (Center for OSCE Research Working Paper No. 8, Hamburg: CORE, 2002), pp. 102-116. 28 See Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, High Commissioner on National Minorities. Recommendations on Expanding the Concept of Multi-culturalism at the Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. The Hague, 17 February 2000. 29 Law 151/1999, see note 26 above. 30 In 2000 the Christian University Partium in Oradea, with instruction in the Hungarian language, received licence to function. It splintered from the Reformed Theology Faculty at the Protestant Theology Institute in Cluj-Napoca, which had been set up in 1991. 31 When not specified otherwise, in this section I talk about the Hungarian lines of study at Babeș-Bolyai University, rather than the whole university. 32 The following section is based on interviews with the members of Hungarian academia in Cluj-Napoca, conducted in 2015. 33 In 2000 the Christian University Partium in Oradea, with instruction in the Hungarian language, received licence to function. It splintered from the Reformed Theology Faculty at the Protestant Theology Institute in Cluj-Napoca, which had been set up in 1991. 34 And in a number of cases they were parallel at the level of Sapientia too. 35 Sapientia advanced the first request of accreditation of its programs in 2007, and the request for institutional accreditation in 2009, granted in 2010. 36 Art 115 (1, 2) in the present 2014 UBB Charter. 37 The main objectives and the proposed activities of the University Federation are the following: the support of the scientific colleges that secure the formation of the future elites, the support of the different forms of teacher-student collaboration, tutorial programs for students, the support of visiting professor programs, the support and implementation of research programs, organization of conferences, workshops and other scientific events with the scope of the development of the scientific activities. 38 Despite the fact that the Romanian government supports the Hungarian lines of study by according a differential quota for students learning in the Hungarian language, which is usually twice the sum granted for a student at Romanian language programs, the number of students applying for programs in the Hungarian language, at many UBB Faculties is so small that the minimal costs of their organization cannot be covered. 39 Rostás Szabolcs. 2013. “Sapientiás egyetemünnep Kolozsváron”. Krónika, 4 October 2013. http://kronika.ro/erdelyi-hirek/sapientias-egyetemunnep-kolozsvaron (accessed on 30 October 2015). 40 400 million Hungarian Forint (about 1.3 million Euro) were allocated to Sapientia University, through the Bethlen Gábor Fund, by the Hungarian government in 2012. See http://bgazrt.hu (accessed on 20 June 2015). 41 For this conceptualisation of state space see Henri Lefebvre, “Space and the State,” in Neil Brenner et al. (eds), State/Space. A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), pp. 84-100. 42 The Carpathian Basin Project, 1997-2000 (see note 15 above); Kárpát Panel (The Carpathian Panel), 2007, sociological survey on Hungarians living in the Carpathian Basin, employing representative samples in five countries, by the Max Weber Foundation for Social Research, Cluj-Napoca, and the Research Institute of Ethnic and National Minorities - the Hungarian Academy of Sciences from Budapest, with partners the Forum Institute for
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Social Research (Slovakia), Lehoczky Tivadar Social Research Institute (Ukraine), and the Scientific Society of Hungarology (Serbia). 43 Act LXII of 2001 on Hungarians Living In Neighbouring Countries. 44 For a powerful interpretation of the Hungarian approach concerning the links between state and nation, as expressed through the Status Law, see Brigid Fowler, “Fuzzing Citizenship, Nationalising Political Space: A Framework for Interpreting the Hungarian ‘Status Law’ as a New Form of Kin-state Policy in Central and Eastern Europe,” in Zoltán Kántor et. al. (eds), The Hungarian Status Law: Nation Building and/ or Minority Protection (Slavic Research Center, Sapporo: Hokkaido University, 2004), pp. 177-238. For an analysis of the tensions arising from Hungary’s policies regarding Hungarian ethnics abroad see Irina Culic, “Dilemmas of Belonging: Hungarians from Romania,” Nationalities Papers Vol. 34, No. 2 (May 2006), pp. 175-200. 45 Kántor, “Nationalizing Minorities,” pp. 250-256. 46 Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania. Regionalism, Nation Building, and Ethnic Struggle, 19181930 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995). 47 See the chapter dedicated to Transylvania in Livezeanu, Cultural Politics, pp. 129-187. 48 Kántor, “Nationalizing Minorities,” pp. 255, 251. 49 Hungary strongly supported autonomy for Hungarian ethnic minorities in neighbouring countries. The concern for its transborder kin is enshrined in the Constitution since 1989. Article 6(3) provided that “The Republic of Hungary bears a sense of responsibility for the fate of Hungarians living outside its borders and shall promote and foster their relations with Hungary.” Hungary built a strong public institutional structure to address the issue of Hungarians abroad, by setting up a governmental office for minorities abroad in 1992, and a network of public foundations to support their cultural, social, and economic activities. 50 DAHR and Hungary’s Antall government’s strive in this respect was propped by Recommendation 1201 (1993) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, on an additional protocol on the rights of national minorities to the European Convention on Human Rights. Article 11 advised that “In the regions where they are in a majority the persons belonging to a national minority shall have the right to have at their disposal appropriate local or autonomous authorities or to have a special status, matching the specific historical and territorial situation and in accordance with the domestic legislation of the state.” 51 For DAHR’s politics between 1990-1996, see István Horváth,“Facilitating Conflict Transformation”, pp. 19-45. 52 European integration had been Hungary’s major foreign policy objective during Prime Minister Gyula Horn’s government, 1994-1998, to which relations with national minorities abroad was subordinated. 53 The change in the law of education was achieved in 1999, through the Law 151/1999 (3 August 1999), to approve the Emergency Ordinance 36/1997 to change and complete the law of education, Law 84/1995. The Law 215/2001 (23 April 2001), on local public administration, was introduced during the following government led by the Social Democratic Party (Partidul Social Democrat, PSD), with which DAHR signed a protocol of cooperation negotiating legislation packages and other measures concerning minority-related issues, in exchange for support in Parliament. 54 Zoltán Kántor and Nándor Bárdi, “The Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (DAHR) in the Government of Romania from 1996 to 2000,” Regio - Minorities, Politics, Society Vol. 1/2002 (2002), p. 206. In 1997 was set up the Department for the Protection of National Minorities (Departamentul pentru Protecţia Minorităţilor Naţionale, DPMN), led by a minister delegated to the Prime Minister. 55 Ibid., pp. 203-204. For an analysis of DAHR’s performance as political party, and as party in government, see Kiss Tamás, Gergő Barna, and István Gergő Székely, “A társadalomépítéstől a klientúra-építésig. Az RMDSZ és a magyar választók közötti kapcsolódás átalakulása” (From the construction of society to the construction of clientele. The transformation of the link between DAHR and Hungarian voters), Magyar kisebbség Vol. 2013/2, No. 68 (2013), pp. 7-40. 56 For an interpretation of the impact and meaning of the referendum see Culic, “Dilemmas of Belonging.” 57 Euractiv, “Slovakia-Hungary row over citizenship law” (January 27, 2011), https://www.euractiv.com/section/languages-culture/news/slovakia-hungary-row-over-citizenship-law/ (accessed on 30 March 2016). 58 Partidul Civic Maghiar, Magyar Polgári Párt, PCM. 59 Partidul Popular Maghiar din Transilvania, Erdélyi Magyar Néppárt, PPMT. Set up in 2011. 60 Uniunea Civică Maghiară, Magyar Polgári Szövetség, UCM. 61 Consiliul Național al Maghiarilor din Transilvania, Erdélyi Magyar Nemzeti Tanács, CNMT, the splinter group emerged under the leadership of László Tőkés in 2003, after DAHR’s seventh congress. 62 DAHR won 5.23% votes for the Senate (9 seats), 5.13% votes for the Chamber of Deputies (18 seats). 63 Endre Borbáth , “Autonomia teritorială în România luată în serios”, 2015,
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http://www.openpolitics.ro/noutati/homepage/autonomia-teritoriala-romania-luata-serios.html (accessed on 15 November 2015). 64 For a history of the set up of the Hungarian Autonomous Region see Stefano Bottoni, “The Creation of the Hungarian Autonomous Region in Romania (1952): Premises and Consequences,” Regio - Minorities, Politics, Society Vol. 1/2003 (2003), pp. 71–93. 65 A Great March of the Szeklers took part in the county of Covasna on 27 October 2013, gathering over 100,000 people in a human chain stretched over 54 kilometers. See Andreea Unturica and Kiss Edit, “ ‘Marele marş al secuilor’, în judeţul Covasna. 100.000 de maghiari au format un lanţ viu: Este în interesul nostru, al poporului secuiesc, ca relaţia dintre Ungaria şi România să fie bună,” (‘The Great March of the Szeklers’ in the county of Covasna. 100,000 Hungarians formed a living chain: It is in our interest, of the Szekler people, that the relation between Hungary and Romania is good), Mediafax (27 October 2013), at http://www.mediafax.ro/social/marelemars-al-secuilor-in-judetul-covasna-100-000-de-maghiari-au-format-un-lant-viu-este-in-interesul-nostru-alpoporului-secuiesc-ca-relatia-dintre-ungaria-si-romania-sa-fie-buna-11568922 (accessed on 29 June 2015). The placards carried messages that asked the recognition of Hungarian as official language next to Romanian, the set up of a separate development region comprising the counties of Harghita, Covasna, and Mureș, the right to use the Szekler symbols - presently, the Covasna County Council is fighting a legal battle against the county government for the right to raise the Szekler flag on its building. Many local councils and locality halls in the two counties put up the Szekler flag on their buildings. The participants to the March emphatically affirmed that Romania is their country too, and that they wanted autonomy, not independence. 66 “Hungarian-Hungarian relations” refer to the links established between the main political actors in Hungary and the political organisations of the Hungarians living abroad. The most comprehensive framework that formalizes the Hungarian-Hungarians relations is the Hungarian Standing Conference (Magyar Állandó Értekezlet, MAÉRT). This was created in 1999 by the Hungarian government, in order to meet the demand for regular and institutionalized relations between the Hungarian Government and Hungarian communities living outside Hungary. MAÉRT comprises organizations of Hungarians abroad that are represented in the local or national democratically elected bodies in their host countries, members of the parties represented in the Hungarian Parliament, and members of the Hungarian Government. 67 In English on Hungarian Governmentțs website, http://www.kormany.hu/download/4/c3/30000/THE%20FUNDAMENTAL%20LAW%20OF%20HUNGARY.pdf (accessed on 13 January 2014). 68 “Székelyföld az erdélyi magyar szórvány belső anyaországa lehet” (Szeklerland may be the internal motherland for scattered Hungarians in Transylvania), Új Magyar Szó online (14 November 2013), at http://www.maszol.ro/index.php/tarsadalom/20819-szekelyfold-az-erdelyi-magyar-szorvany-belso-anyaorszagalehet (accessed on 13 January 2014). 69 Kiss, Perspectivă administrativă, p. 163. 70 See Tamás Kiss and Gergő Barna, “Erdélyi magyarok a magyarországi és a romániai politikai térben” (Transylvanian Hungarians on the Hungarian and the Romanian political scene), Working Papers in Romanian Minority Studies, No. 50 (ISPMN: Cluj-Napoca, 2008), p. 11. The question asked in Hungarian in original is “Ön szerint a romániai/erdélyi magyarok részét képezik-e a román nemzetnek?” 65% (2007), 63% (2010), 52% (2013) answered “yes”. Hungarians also answered affirmatively, in even bigger numbers, at the question whether they belonged to the Hungarian nation. Prompted to specify what they mean with the answer to the former question, most of the respondents made reference to the territory: Romania is their native place, they live in Romania. The paper lists and makes use of all surveys carried out in Romania on representative samples of Hungarians. 71 See Valér Veres, “Analiza comparată a identităţii minorităţilor maghiare din România, Serbia, Slovacia şi Ucraina” (The comparative analysis of Hungarian minority identity in Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Ukraine), Working Papers in Romanian Minority Studies, No. 2 (ISPMN: Cluj-Napoca, 2008), p. 11. The paper, discussing the results of the 2007 Kárpát Panel survey, shows that 46.5% identified Romania as their country, 31.4% Transylvania, 8% the place where they live, and 3.7% Hungary. 72 “Köver Laszlo: ‘90.000 de maghiari din Transilvania vor vota la alegerile din Ungaria’” (Köver Laszlo: "90.000 Hungarians from Transylvania will vote at the elections in Hungary), Ziua de Cluj (9 January 2013), at http://ziuadecj.realitatea.net/intern-and-extern/kover-laszlo-90000-de-maghiari-din-transilvania-vor-vota-laalegerile-din-ungaria--121984.html (accessed on 13 January 2015). 73 About a quarter of Hungarians declare that they have not and will not apply for Hungarian citizenship. See details in Kiss and Barna, “Erdélyi magyarok,” pp. 18-21. I have processed data from the 2012 Ethnobarometer carried out by ISPMN to support the analysis of motivation for acquiring Hungarian citizenship.
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Culic, “Dilemmas of Belonging,” pp. 181-184. See Rogers Brubaker, Margit Feischmidt, Jon Fox and Liana Grancea, Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006). 76 Kántor and Bárdi, “The Democratic Alliance,” pp. 217-218. 75
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