Hungarian autonomy aspirations in Transylvania after 1989
The issue of Hungarian autonomy in Transylvania was raised again by the Hungarian Democratic Alliance of Romania (DAHR), which acted on behalf of the Hungarian minority, after the fall of the communist dictatorship in late 1989. Drawing on earlier concepts, a number of proposals has been drafted over the years, mostly within a comprehensive administrative reform, which sought to settle the situation of the Hungarian minority in Romania on the basis of the principles of territorial and cultural self-government (see for example the 1992 Cluj Declaration). The primary aim of these concepts was to ensure the equal rights and ethno-cultural reproduction of the Hungarian minority, as opposed to the Romanian nation-state building process, which entailed centralisation and assimilation. From the second half of the 1990s, however, the DAHR’s involvement in government eclipsed the autonomy aspirations and was replaced by a strategy of political integration, parallel institution-building and gradual legal expansion. After 2003, the issue of Hungarian autonomy was again put on the agenda by new organisations (Transylvanian Hungarian National Council, Szekler National Council), which were founded with support of Hungary. They wanted to achieve autonomy in the context of Romania’s Euro-Atlantic integration, but their efforts were unsuccessful. In addition to ethnic-based self-government (mainly covering the Hungarian-majority region of Szeklerland), regional, transnational ideas were also put forward, and some drafts were based on European models. Although the Hungarian actors in Romania rejected violence from the outset and sought to reach an agreement with the majority, counting on international support (and pressure), the Romanians have so far stubbornly refused to give up the idea of a “unitary nation-state”, and have rejected Hungarian autonomy aspirations in Transylvania as manifestations of Hungarian nationalism and separatism without any substantive debate.