Legislation

(Bucharest, November 18, 1993)

According to the results of the 1992 Romanian census the various ethnic minorities constitute nearly 12% of the total population of Romania. These national minorities, more than fifteen in number, have very different traditions, past history, relationship to the state, proportion of the population and degree of organization. The Lipovan and Italian minority with only a few thousand members might intend to define its rights in a different way as the German ethnic group, which has fallen from about half a million to only tens of thousands, not to speak about the approximately two million strong Hungarian minority. The Law proposed by the DAHR provides a general legal framework, which could be suitable to settle the legal position of each of the national minorities living in Romania. The Law guarantees all the individual human rights of the persons belonging to national minorities as codified in the various international documents. Moreover the proposal makes it possible for any of the national minorities to declare themselves as autonomous communities. Autonomous communities are those communities, which have the material and spiritual resources needed for their self- organization of a certain degree and for developing a necessary system of institutions. It must be emphasized, that membership of a national minority is a matter of free personal choice, and the declaration of being an autonomous community by a national minority depends on the free decision of the national minority in question.

If a national minority declares itself to be an autonomous community, it is in its right to develop its own system of institutions.

The Law takes into consideration the geographical location of the various national minorities, as whether they are dispersed or live in one or more blocks, and, accordingly, it distinguishes three types of autonomy in its dispositions, namely:

(a) personal autonomy

(b) local self-government of special status

(c) regional autonomy

(a) In the framework of personal autonomy persons belonging to a national minority are entitled to exercise their minority rights and to develop their institutions irrespective of residence. (For instance, such an institution can be the supreme decision-making body of the given community; in the case of Hungarians in Romania this body is the Council of Representatives. Similarly an independent school-system, cultural institutions are to be developed among other things for each national minority.)

(b) In the framework of the local self-government of special status the national minority, which lives concentrated in one area, is entitled to administrative functions in addition to the right to preserve its ethnic, cultural and religious identity. The dispositions regulating the local self-government of special status are complemented by the relevant provisions of the Law on Local Administration. Therefore, the local self-government of special status is not a parallel administration but a local government which has special decision-making powers in the questions directly affecting the community in question. Among the entitlements following from this special status is, for instance, that in the local self-governments of such special status the language of the national minority which constitutes the majority population in that area has to be used as an official language in addition to the language of the state.

(c) The association of the local self-governments of special status will result in the establishment of the regional autonomies' system of institutions.

The system of institutions as sketched above will enable all the minorities living in Romania, as well as citizens belonging to the majority population living in minority areas, to find the means best suited for preserving their ethnic, cultural and religious identity. Overall, the aim of the DAHR is the strengthening of the different autonomies by the decentralization of central power according to the principle of subsidiary.

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