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After a break of more than ten years, the new session of the Hungarian-Romanian Joint Minority Committee, which aims to identify and solve the problems of the Hungarian minority living in Romania and the Romanian minority living in Hungary, began in Bucharest on Monday with a meeting of the co-chairs.
The Hungarian side is looking for solutions to issues such as restitution, hate speech in stadiums, the Catholic high school in Târgu Mures (Marosvásárhely), Hungarian medical training, and the use of symbols, Ferenc Kalmár, the Hungarian co-chair of the committee, told Hungarian news agency MTI.
He recalled that according to the Hungarian-Romanian basic treaty signed in 1996, a joint committee of experts and representatives of the relevant ministries, to be set up to solve the problems of national minorities, must meet at least once a year to propose solutions to the problems that arise. The minutes of the last meeting were signed in 2009. The minutes of the eighth meeting of the committee, held in 2011, were not signed by the Hungarian side, as 18 issues raised by them were not discussed.
Last year in Gyula, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó and Romanian diplomatic chief Bogdan Aurescu agreed to relaunch the institutional framework for inter-state dialogue on the situation of minorities. At the time, Ferenc Kalmár and Iulia Matei, then co-chair of the committee, signed the minutes of the eighth session, which included a commitment to discuss the 18 points that had not been agreed on over the years at the ninth session, adding the problems that had arisen in the meantime.
On Monday, Kalmár met with the current Romanian co-chair of the joint minority committee, state secretary Daniela Gitman, to prepare for the plenary session of the 30-strong body next spring.
Asked what was expected of the dialogue, which is to be relaunched after a break of more than ten years to address the “historical legacy” of 18 unresolved cases and many of the problems that have arisen since then, the Special Ministerial Envoy said that the dialogue must be maintained and that it must always be with the hope of reaching an agreement.
Via: MTI ; Featured photo: mae.ro
