November 2005

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EU SUPPORT FOR THE ROMANIAN BILL ON NATIONAL MINORITIES (Eurolang)

The European Union has urged Romania to adopt the Bill on the statute of national minorities as a condition of Romania’s EU entry. The Romanian Government promised this would happen before January and representatives of Romania’s largest ethnic minority, the Hungarians, expect this no later than March. Meanwhile, the Romanian opposition, as well as voices within the ruling coalition, are opposed to the legislation as well as wanting to exclude cultural autonomy from it.

The draft bill, initiated by the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ, UDMR) is part of the Government’s programme. It establishes cultural autonomy for ethnic minorities based on language, educational, cultural and religious rights to be supervised by minority autonomy councils.

However, the Senate, the upper House of the Romanian Parliament where the ruling coalition have a fragile majority, excluded the clause on cultural autonomy from the bill and then rejected it as a whole.

The European Parliament (EP) Foreign Affairs Committee adopted a report based on a draft by French Socialist MEP Pierre Moscovici on Romania’s preparedness for EU accession. EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said at the debate on the report that Romania was supposed to adopt the Bill on national minorities in order to obtain a more favourable report in April.

At the initiative of Hungarian MEPs Csaba Tabajdi, István Szent-Iványi, Committee Vice-President Kinga Gál, Gábor Harangozó, György Schöpflin and Alexandra Dobolyi, as well as Toomas Hendrik Ilves and Michl Ebner, the report was amended with recommendations for Romania to adopt the Bill and to improve the situation of ethnic minorities in the fields of mother tongue education, restitution of properties and amending the electoral law.