Hungarian Conservative

While Romania did partially join the Schengen Area in March 2024, eliminating border checks for sea and air travel with other nations within the zone, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó of Hungary would like to see the check-free travel extended to land transportation as well. He believes that it would facilitate trade between Hungary and Romania; and would make it easier for ethnic Hungarians living in Romania to visit their motherland.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán held talks with his Romanian counterpart Marcel Ciolacu on Friday, a day before Orbán’s speech at Tusványos. The discussions focused on bilateral relations between the two countries and Romania’s accession to the Schengen Area.

‘The complicated political system, and the fact that the people are called three separate times to the polls this year may lead to the success of the more radical messages, because they are simple and smartly formulated. However, according to a survey conducted in April, more than half of those surveyed stated that in the European Parliament elections, they would vote for the party to which their preferred candidate for mayor belongs. This reflects the tendency of trusting local policy makers rather than politicians at the national level who constantly argue with each other in the capital city.’

Three Romanian boys have been expelled from the Romanian Gymnastics National Team in response to the horrific incident. They have been named in the press as well: Mihai Iustin, Andrei Titi, and Flavius Borca. The Resicabánya (Rešica) police are also reportedly investigating the matter.

The 15-year-old boy was allegedly tied to a radiator naked while the other gymnasts were chanting ‘ungure, ungure,’ meaning ‘Hungarian, Hungarian’ in English. It is unclear if legal action will be taken against the perpetrators.

Mihai Tîrnoveanu attempted to display a banner with the writing ‘Transylvania is Romanian land’ at a 15 March celebration attended by Foreign Minister Szijjártó of Hungary in Sepsiszentgyörgy. However, the banner was confiscated before the event, and the wannabe disruptor was arrested by local police.

The university’s public statement recalled that since 2019, researchers have been conducting excavations near the Transylvanian village of Valiora. Their findings include numerous bones from vertebrates that lived at the end of the Cretaceous period. Scientific analyses of the artefacts are still ongoing.

Bulgaria and Romania have taken an important step towards full Schengen membership: from March 2024, air and maritime transport will be subject to the rules of the free movement area. However, Austria has still not lifted its veto against full membership for Bucharest. For Hungary—and for the EU as a whole—enlargement of the area would be crucial for a number of reasons, and it is possible that Vienna will be persuaded by Budapest, which will soon hold the EU presidency.

‘The mamaliga (a typical Romanian boiled cornmeal dish) will not explode,’ Communist dictator Ceaușescu famously said in the 1980s, dismissing the potential of the forces that opposed him. But the discontent with the oppressive regime had been brewing for a long time by then, so the sparkle represented by the brave resistance of Hungarian Reformed pastor László Tőkés and his flock was enough to light the fire of the revolution all across Romania.

Senator Diana Șoșoacă, who recently had to form her own party after being expelled from her old group, shouted anti-Hungarian slogans while Senator Turos from RMDSZ, the party representing ethnic Hungarians, was making a speech about what the 1 December holiday meant to the Hungarians living in Transylvania.

The Hungarian-language version of the Brussels-based news site has since changed the title of their article. However, the cached version of their horrible faux pas is still available through a simple Google search.

There have been misleading press reports suggesting that now Hungary lags behind Romania, based on Eurostat’s fresh data that say that in 2022, Hungary’s GDP per capita at purchasing power parity was 76.6 per cent of the EU average, while in Romania, this ratio was 76.7 per cent. The economic researchers at the Nézőpont Institute investigated whether Romania had indeed overtaken Hungary in economic terms. ‘Based on Eurostat’s data, the answer is simple: no,’ researchers assert in a statement.

Although the unification made the dream of the Romanians come true, the aspirations of Transylvanian Hungarians for self-determination were ignored. The annexation of Transylvania to Romania was finally enshrined by the Treaty of Paris.

Minister of Construction and Transport János Lázár announced near Nyírmeggyes in Szabolcs–Szatmár–Bereg County that the construction of the first, 28-kilometre-long segment of the expressway being built in two phases between the M3 motorway and the Hungarian–Romanian border has begun, with an investment of approximately 175 billion forints by Duna Aszfalt.

István András Kiss spent many years playing for the Kolozsvár (Cluj) team CFR; he even won the national youth league with their youth team in 1985. In this interview he speaks about what it was like to be an ethnic Hungarian football player in Communist Romania, where ‘class warfare and chauvinism could easily co-exist’.

The PM’s press chief, Bertalan Havasi told MTI that in a letter sent on Saturday, Viktor Orbán expressed his gratitude to Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu for having received him in Bucharest earlier this week, and for having ‘ensured the safety and security of the Tusnádfürdő Free University and making it possible for me to deliver my remarks today in undisturbed and peaceful circumstances.’

After the recent repeated defiling of the Úzvölgy military cemetery, Hungarians in Romania are now bracing themselves for another provocation in Tusványos.

According to the European Parliament, Romania and Bulgaria’s industries and inhabitants are negatively impacted socially and economically by the two nations’ continued exclusion from the visa-free zone.

Nowadays there are renewed efforts to reinvigorate and preserve the ancient identity of the Csángós. One of the most notable examples is the Council of Europe’s ‘Csango minority culture in Romania’ report, which, beside being a great overview of Csángó culture, also serves as a call to action to save this unique identity.

Bucharest would also deepen its defence cooperation with Washington, and not exclusively through arms purchases. Meanwhile, Romania and Poland, the two largest countries in the Central and Eastern European region, are building the two most powerful militaries, with a strong emphasis on interoperability between their armed forces.

‘We cannot look at the European Union as those who must be listened to and must always have the best solutions in a suitcase to Bucharest or Warsaw,’ Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki stressed in Bucharest.

Romanian football fans engaged in their habit of chanting slogans degrading Hungary again at both of the European Championship qualifier games. What’s more, they also brought a banner mocking the Greater Hungary map and started a fight among themselves this time.

Romania has joined Budapest in criticising some of Kyiv’s policies. Bucharest has raised ecological concerns over Ukraine’s plan to continue to dredge the Danube Delta to increase its volume of trade through the Bystroye Canal.

The supporters of FC U Craiova claim they were ‘defending Romanian national integrity’ with their chants.

Austria and the Netherlands vetoing Romania and Bulgaria’s Schengen accession contributes to the cementing of a multi-speed Europe.

In this article, we are reviewing Hungarian minority parties in Slovakia and Romania.

It was not only the repression of personal liberties, the control over the media and the personal cult of Ceaușescu which made the Romanian one party-system infamous, but also the decline in the country’s living standards.

The need to regulate mobile phone use has become evident based on experiences from recent years, as excessive use has been shown to significantly hinder children’s academic performance and negatively impact their physical and mental well-being.

An in-depth interview with pianist and choir director Zsuzsánna Balla, who has lived in the United States for more than twenty years, and yet she and her family have preserved and continue to foster their Hungarian heritage, and are active and enthusiastic members of the Hungarian American community.

The reigning Hungarian champions Ferencváros beat out the Bosnian side FK Borac Banja Luka on penalties in the away leg, and thus qualified for the Europa League’s newly established league phase. Meanwhile, Puskás Akadémia also made it to the penalty shootout against the finalists of the last two Conference League campaigns, the Italian Fiorentina, but narrowly fell short this time.