2012-12-13

On today’s Strasbourg meeting of the European Parliament’s Intergroup for Traditional Minorities, National Communities and Languages, Gyula Winkler, DAHR’s deputy in the European Parliament made a report on the Romanian election results. Comparing the Romanian election law to „Russian roulette”, the MEP presented some of the anomalies that stem from the law.

The MEP emphasized that at its adoption in 2008 DAHR was the only political party that foresaw its damaging effects and resolutely protested against it.

The Hungarian MEP from Transylvania emphasized that, invariably, the Alliance represents the interests of all the community’s members, in line with the goals it set for itself at its inception. It changed neither its name nor its programme, but it consequently tuned and updated its strategy during the years in order to best respond to the changing political situations. DAHR, which, following the elections of 9 December won 5,3% of the seats in the Romanian Parliament, received 89% of the votes of the Hungarians from Romania against its „internal” challenger, which won less than 1% of the total votes and only 11% within the community. 
 
Since 1996, besides the particular subjects concerning the community’s minority position, like education and mother tongue use, the Alliance has extended its political programme to cover a series of extremely important areas, such as economic and regional policy. Through the Transylvania 2020 strategy, DAHR also succeeded to align these policies with the EU’s targets for 2020. Considering the recent declarations of the winning coalition on subjects like constitution change, and administrative reorganisation, the MEP admitted that the Alliance has challenging times ahead. „With our presence in the Romanian Parliament and in Brussels we invariably represent the interests of the Hungarians from Transylvania. The way in which we do this is also defined by the mandate from our community. Our goals are the same as 23 years ago”, stated Winkler.
 
Csaba Sógor DAHR’s MEP added: „DAHR is invariably the leading political force of the Hungarian national minority from Romania. The Alliance shall continue to consistently and legitimately represent in a European spirit not just the interests of its voters but of all Hungarians from Transylvania. The votes cast for the Alliance guarantee Romania’s future in the EU and the persistence of spirit of democracy”.
 
The second point on the agenda was the discussion on the rights related to the use of regional languages in Spain. The motive for having the discussion was that, because of the recent initiatives of the Spanish government, the current bilingual immersive educational programmes from the autonomous regions would suffer. The MEPs pledged their support to their Catalan, Basque and Galician colleagues. The members of the Intergroup adopted a common declaration on their commitment to safeguard the regional languages from Spain.