It seems that Romania is not lying to itself this time either: several politicians of the ruling party advocated the rejection of the motions, the Prime Minister spoke of a "toxic initiative" when talking about the draft of the autonomy of the Hungarians in Székelyföld and Transylvania.
According to the agenda approved by the house committee and published on the website of the Romanian House of Representatives on Wednesday, the meeting will be held in a hybrid form in the early afternoon, i.e. the members of parliament who are not present can join online.
On the agenda are all three autonomy drafts, which were submitted on December 20 as individual representatives' bills in the Romanian House of Representatives by Zoltán Zakariás, president of the Transylvanian Hungarian Association (EMSZ). These were also supported by the Acting President of the Hungarian Civil Force (MPE), József Kulcsár-Terza, who, like Zakarias, obtained a representative mandate on the list of the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (RMDSZ).
One document is the draft framework law regulating the cultural autonomy of national communities, the second is the cultural autonomy statute of the Hungarian national community.
These legislative drafts were developed in the professional workshops of the Transylvanian Hungarian National Council (EMNT). The third submitted initiative is the autonomy statute of Székelyföld, which was developed by the Székely National Council (SZNT), and is now being presented to the Romanian legislature for the fourth time.
A week ago, Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu asked the Speaker of the House to quickly reject the autonomy drafts on his social media page, so they were already on the agenda between the two holidays.
In his post, the Prime Minister described the legislative proposals as a "toxic initiative".
On Wednesday, Ciprian Serban, the leader of the lower house faction of the PSD, made a similar statement on his social media page, calling the drafts "toxic and divisive". He emphasized that he and his party colleagues are firmly convinced that legislative proposals aimed at the autonomy of Székelyföld or cultural autonomy based on ethnic criteria "have no place in a democratic state".
PSD parliamentarian Marius Budai also took a stand against "segregation based on ethnic criteria" in his Facebook post, explaining that in some way each draft calls for this.
Alfred Simonis, the Acting Speaker of the House of Representatives, objected that the representatives of the Association for the Unification of Romanians (AUR), which is considered extreme by other Romanian parties, did not support the urgent procedure for discussing the draft laws at the house committee's meeting on Wednesday. The PSD politician expressed hope that none of the factions will use Thursday's meeting for campaign purposes and will not create a scandal.
The autonomy statute, which foresees territorial autonomy for Székelyföld and was developed by SZNT, will be submitted to the Romanian legislature for the fourth time, after being rejected by the Romanian majority in 2004, 2018 and 2020.
On the occasion of the latest submission, it caused a domestic political scandal in Romania that the autonomy statute of Székelyföld passed from the House of Representatives of the two-chambered Romanian Parliament as a "tacitly accepted" draft to the senate, which is responsible for making the substantive decision: this happened because the deadline set for its discussion had expired.
MTI
Cover image: The Székely flag
Source: szekelyhon.ro
