Asked what guarantees he would offer to Romania’s 1.4 million ethnic Hungarian minority in Romania if elected president, nationalist candidate George Simion had a warning: they are Romanian first.
He said that “all ethnic Hungarians must understand that they are good citizens of Romania… There are people who do not want the good of the Hungarian communities in Romania and want to go in the same direction that Emmanuel Macron and all the globalists in Brussels are going, instead of going in the conservative, healthy direction, to which a majority of the Hungarian people adhere,” he said at debate organized by Euronews with opponent Nicușor Dan who he will meet in the May 18 runoff.
Ethnic Hungarians who mainly live in Transylvania enjoy broad rights in Romania such as education, bi-lingual signs and being able to speak their mother tongue in court in areas where they are the majority.
But Simion appeared to gloss over those rights. “the Romanian people and the Hungarian people have other obstacles ahead, other challenges and we must be united in the face of these challenges with common positions”.
“I respect the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban and that is why many of his positions, not all mind you, but many of his positions will be state policy in Romania as well.”
Orban is known for championing ‘illiberal democracy’. He is strongly anti-migration and has clamped down on the independent media and nationalized many publications and like Simion talks about ‘a Christian Europe.’
“Now is the time for a Europe of nations, a Christian Europe, in which we will fight for our right to be European citizens. And both Romanians and Hungarians are full citizens of the European Union,” George Simion said.
