Solid legal and political frameworks protect the rights of Romania's national minorities, but the future of minority language rights in Romania is uncertain, the 46-member minority protection body of the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe (ET) announced on Tuesday.

In its report, the Advisory Committee of the Framework Convention on the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM), which operates under the supervision of the Council of Europe, wrote, first of all, that the twenty national minorities recognized in Romania receive generous financial support for the promotion and protection of their culture, and their participation in political decision-making bodies is guaranteed.

At the same time, they highlighted:

however, many issues must be addressed, such as the uncertainty regarding the future guarantee of the right to use minority languages, discrimination against the Roma in education, and the investigation and sanctioning of police abuses against national minorities.

It was announced that the 2022 census recorded a decrease in the number of people belonging to national minorities. According to the experts, the decline leads to uncertainty regarding the future implementation of the right to use the minority language in the public administration, before the courts and in the case of signs in public areas, since - as they reminded - the condition for the use of language rights is that the proportion of those belonging to the nationality cannot fall below twenty percent in the affected settlement.

The expert panel asked the competent Romanian authorities to proceed with caution when applying the twenty percent threshold, and recommended using an absolute number instead of this threshold. 

The experts also expressed their regret that the Romanian government has still not approved the use of bilingual administrative forms required by the current legislation.

They acknowledged that the minority language education system still works, but there is a shortage of teachers in some languages. According to experts, the relevant Romanian authorities have made efforts to improve the presentation of national minorities in educational materials and provide information on minority cultures and the Holocaust. Despite everything, the authorities must do more to make the history of the Roma and Jewish minorities known and to improve the current situation of these groups, they emphasized.

Finally, it was noted that the competent Romanian authorities are investing significant amounts in the promotion of intercultural dialogue. They wrote: while anti-Semitism and especially anti-Gypsyism are still present, the vast majority of the population of Romania does not perceive a distance between Romanians and Hungarians on an individual level.

On a political level, however, several events have sparked heated debates about differing interpretations of history and the use of flags and anthems

- was highlighted in its report by the Council of Europe's (EC) expert body on minority protection.

MTI

Cover image: Illustration / Klaus Iohannis Facebook