Budapest Trust the DUHR

Prime-Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu was in Budapest for one day where he met his Hungarian counterpart, Ferenc Gyurcsany. With this occasion, the Hungarian Prime Minister announced that the Government in Budapest supports the initiatives of the representatives of the Hungarian minority in Romania, the DUHR (Democrat Union of the Hungarians in Romania) respectively.

THE E.U. Ferenc Cyurcsany insists on the support Hungary offers Romania for the integration, and Calin Popescu Tariceanu expressed his hope that Hungary would be one of the first countries to ratify the adherence Treaty.

Prime Minister Tariceanu, after arriving in the Hungarian capital few minutes before 11:00, has been welcomed by his counterpart, Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, with military honors, on the plateau in front of the headquarters of the Hungarian Republic Parliament, informs Mediafax. For a few moments, the national anthems of the two countries were heard in the Kosuth Lajos Plaza. After the welcoming ceremony, Ferenc Gyurcsany and Calin Popescu Tariceanu immediately started the negotiations. At first, the two Prime Ministers had a private talk, and then, the discussions continued in the presence of the two delegations. External Affairs Minister, Razvan Ungureanu, and vice-PM B..la Mark, the DUHR president, were two of the members of the Romanian delegation.

VISAS. One of the issues taken into consideration by the two Prime Ministers was a project of the Hungarian Government, which refers to introducing visas for the Hungarians wanting to spend more time in Hungary. The project appeared "with the purpose of preserving the language, the culture, and the national identity, of maintaining family relationships or of benefiting from medical treatments", as the Hungarian side stated at the beginning of this year. The visas, which could be enforced by the 31st of March 2005, will be valid for five years, and useful for multiple visits in the country, and for visits longer than 90 days, but they will not allow the work permit as well. "We both think that this kind of visas cannot be awarded based on ethnical reasons, but on nationality reasons. I don’t think that there is a problem with these visas as long as they are enforced in accordance with the European spirit", was Mister Tariceanu’s conclusion. In this context, the Hungarian side suggested the possibility of the initiation in Romania of some Hungarian diplomatic representations. Tariceanu assured the Hungarian Prime Minister that this proposition would be thoroughly analyzed.

ROSIA MONTANA. The development project for the gold at Rosia Montana, in the Apuseni mountains, which was initiated by the Rosia Montana Gold Corporation mixed Romanian - Canadian company, was another issue of the meeting of the two Prime Ministers. "For now, since the project didn’t officially start, we cannot talk about any official statement", Tariceanu said. He also stated that the project would be analyzed carefully by the Government from a "financial, ecological, social and economical point of view, as well as from the perspectives of the European legislation and of all the standards in this area". On the other hand, the Hungarian Prime Minister expressed the interest of the authorities in Budapest for this matter, taking into consideration the ecological problems recorded on the Tisa River in the past. "Once we suffered from this kind of problems, we look suspiciously towards all these matters", Ferenc Gyurcsany said. The two Prime Ministers reached an agreement saying that the authorities in Bucharest should give to the Hungarian all the information necessary for this project and should consider Hungary’s point of view.

AUTONOMY. One of the matters that started many disputes, the autonomy, could not have missed from the discussion of the two delegations. Actually, pressures for discussing this matter came from the country as well. The representatives of the Council of the German Minority in Romania of the Gheorghieni Residence wrote a letter to the Hungarian Prime Minister, in which they asked him to discuss with his Romanian counterpart about the referendum for the autonomy of the County of the German Minority in Romania. In this context, the Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany reminded that the principle of the localization, supported by the European institutions as well, refers to all the national minorities inside the state, and not to ethnical communities. He also stated that the authorities in Budapest support the same initiatives that make the DUHR requests. Gyurcsany said that the Government in Budapest is encouraged by the care of the Romanian authorities of assuring the localization and autonomy of the local decisions.

COMMON MEETINGS. Romania and Hungary will organize each year a common governmental meeting destined to the strategies for the regional development for intermediate terms. The first meeting of this kind is to happen this fall in Bucharest, as the two Prime Ministers set.

THE MOVIE "TRIANON"

As for the documentary movie that refers to the impact of the Treaty in Trianon upon the Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin, the Prime Minister admitted that the reaction of the Romanian authorities "hasn’t been an adequate one, probably", but he stated that "this is what people could say about the initiative of the authors of this movie". Tariceanu seemed a little bit less preoccupied by the "problems of the past, generally, and by the discussions about Trianon", and more interested in the matters regarding the European integration.