Ficino

Strictly referring to Romania, there is no "growing nationalism" here.

mofli87

If that's true then why is the most important thing for the new romanian government to abandon the hungarian department of the medical university in Targu Mures?
Or to create new electoral system (whichcoincidently unfavourablefor most of hungarians in transylvania?
Or to create new region borders for Romania:



you can see that the 3 "székely" counties ( Mures, Harghita, Covasna) would be in 3 different regions (coincidently)...

Moraelin

No idea what you see as the Netherlands but that map you're showing is a contraction of the Netherlands and Flanders, part of Belgium, where I'm from. The fragmentation that you're aiming at is actually a 1000 times worse (think about the Fries, the Basques, the Catalonians, the Flemish, Scots, Irish, Welsh, Kurds, ...........). All people with very long histories, with distinctive language and culture. They're all in their right for some autonomy. Europe is so old and has so many different 'people' that it's actually pretty impossible to divide it up that way. So we try our best, for 1000's of years already, it's always been changing, it'll always be a risk. This is a continent where you can drive 10km and hear another language, certainly another dialect. Flanders alone has dozens of dialects and there's like 6M people here.

What I personally would like to see is that we as Flanders could separate from Belgium because it's an artifical state and Flanders has always been treated as a 2nd rate region/people by the French speaking bourgeoisie/politicians/rich guys/Royals. I hope I'll still see it in my lifetime.

Tulun

Bihar/Bihor, Kolozs/Cluj, Hargita/Harghita, Kovászna/Covasna and Brassó/Brasov counties where i also stayed. Only crossed Szeben/Sibiu, Fehér/Alba and Maros/Mures countries, didnt stop there. 2-3 case i recieved sudden unfriendly reaction when it came out im Hungarian when i asked or somebody asked direction from me (salut, buna ziua, va rog, unde xy? nu va inteleg, vorbiti englezeshte sau ungureshte? multumesc... roughly this is my Romanian vocabulary ). Then another one was from a CFR employee but maybe she could just be in general @sshole mode. )

And next to the Szent Anna lake (Sfantu Anna in Romanian? lake near Tusnádfürdő/Baile Tusnad) saw 3-4 Romanians who were waving Romanian flags out from a car, laughing and shouting something to the walking people (mostly Hungarians), that i didn't understand, but from the context of the situation they just looked like some local ultranationalists. Nothing extreme, my encounters with Romanians were/are mostly positive, especially from the younger generations (people in their teens or twenties).

I dont know about physical destruction (apart from the few historical ethnic clashes but these happened in both sides). Settlement of ethnic Romanians into Hungarian areas during the communist period (planned or "natural" migration? t is still common pattern to hear more Romanian speech the more you go further out from the downtown, especially in and around commie period block houses) and changing the administrative boundaries to create Romanian majority units (also the best during commie era, but for this there is also a very recent example, the Ponta government's new region plan which would put the 3 neighboring traditionally Szekely counties to 3 separate and predominantly Romanian regions... mofli already posted the map for it). And the still ongoing orthodox church invasion in Szekelyland (the most Romanian orthodox churches per capita are found there in whole Romania Episcopia ortodox ), considering there are very few orthodox worshippers, their sole purpouse is to change the ethnic character there...

true, you just implied "some people, like the member of this forum Tulun, who read only certain kind of biased books and papers, where the Romanians are described like some sort of primitive madmen nationalists"

We don't know each other so really leave out the personal attack stuff, discuss the biasedness of the books with their authors.

Ficino

Because the creation of that department by a governmental decision would have violated the University Autonomy, as asserted by our Education Law. It was a court decision in this regard. Law should be respected in any country.
A new electoral system has been not adopted yet, and I don't think that it will be adopted until the elections this year. But why do you think that it would be unfavorable for most Hungarians?
Re: the map, there have been a lot of proposals for a new Territorial Administrative Reorganization, but none has been adopted yet. Others look like http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fișier:...a_Romaniei.png or http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fișier:...mi_proiect.png etc. The USL project is based exclusively on economic reasons. Be informed that you show just one part of the story there, their project also sustains the actual counties to be kept untouched. As you can see Romanian historic regions are disregarded also in that project, and Romanians have local/regional patriotism too. In what I am concerned, I am not an USL sympathizer, and I consider that project to have been one of the worst.

Alaric

Failed state doesn't mean what you think it means. It has more to do with the ability of the state to function and provide for its citizens, which Bosnia and Macedonia have little problem with (Somalia is on the other hand an example of a failed state). Semantics aside, I understand your point, but it is too early to judge after 20 years. As I've said in another thread, people are expecting us to be thrown into the world and immediately become a mature and fully developed state, even though it took our colleagues hundreds and thousands of years to do so. We'll get there, but gradually.

Tulun

Macedonia maybe if they finally can normalize their relations with international organistations (we know which country blocks that ) and she can become more attractive to the minority groups also. But then Albania is also developing so who knows... Regarding BiH i'm more pessimist, its still governed by a foreign High Representative and i don't see Bosnian Serbs would like to integrate there. And Serbia's European integration will make Bosnia even less atractive for them. I regret it as otherwise i have great sympathies toward the Bosniaks, but i have my doubts about the survival of that country in the next 20 years, at least in her current form.

Ficino

Such unfriendly reactions may be encountered also by the ethnic Romanian tourists when visiting localities situated in the Székely land. But these are peripheral facts, nothing serious. Some people may be drunk, or in a bad mood, or simply prejudiced.

I doubt that such ultra-nationalist people could have been locals, considering the area.

It has been a general trend in Romania people from the villages to move in the cities. If people from the villages in the area have been mostly Romanians, obviously that the ethnic component of the city has been changed. That happened e.g. to Cluj. Only a relatively small percent have come from other areas of the country.
Orthodox Churches are built everywhere, but if you would really read the article, you will see that the title is very confusing and has almost nothing to do with the article's content.
Re: Ponta, I answered above. In their project the actual counties are to be left intact, those economic development regions are to be superimposed over them. The project has nothing anti-Magyar in it, it is just stupid. Look that traditional/historical Romanian regions are also disregarded. Personally I don't think that such a project will ever be adopted, I don't like Ponta, and I consider him to be an idiot and a perpetual blunderer. He is not a nationalist at all, he is a cheguvarist-leftist turned social-democrat demagogue.

I intended just a friendly "badinage", not a personal attack. If you felt offended, my apologies.

Tulun

Hope its true. Regarding nationalism, maybe its just an outsider impression as i m not able to follow Romanian politics daily, but the Romanian left seem to have a certain nationalist flavour? at least they have record of having people with anti-minority stance as was the deceased Adrian Paunescu. Maybe a heritage of the more "national-communist" line of Ceau? But then i can be wrong, didnt make deep research there.


Ok accepted, forget it

mofli87

yes laws should be respected

-The University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Targu Mures has multicultural and multilingual university status in Romanian and Hungarian (Art. 363 of the Education Law). According to Art. 135/1/b, in multicultural and multilingual higher education institutes divisions or sections must be established in the languages ​​of national minorities.

-btw when this originally hungarian university was romanianized there wasn't any problem with the violation of "University Autonomy".

the problem for hungarians that more than 50% of hungarians live in minority (less the 30% of the total population) where they don't hve any chance to elect an MP.