Romanian Youth Voice

Titus Corlăţean, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Senate of Romania, criticises the Hungarian Constitution at the PACE

Dear colleagues,
I would like to draw your attention to a number of issues related to the protection of national minorities, as resulted from the new Constitution of Hungary and the recently adopted opinion of the Venice Commission, making reference inter alia to this topic.

I will also express below several points of concern from this perspective.
Article D of the new Constitution defines “a special responsibility” of Hungary towards Hungarians living abroad. This is not a new topic. Some of you may recall a similar attempt in 2001, when a so-called status law has been promoted, aimed at granting special rights to Hungarians from neighboring countries and also promoting an ethnic ID, to be given to those supposedly belonging to the “Hungarian nation”. That initiative, which also raised preoccupation in neighboring countries, led to the adoption of the Report of the Venice Commission on the preferential treatment of national minorities by their kin-states. The Report concluded that, within the framework set by the Council of Europe’s relevant documents, the primary responsibility for protecting the national minorities lies with the state of residence.

Preferential treatment to kin-minorities abroad could be legitimate in the fields of culture and education, but even in that case they should be granted in accordance with general principles of international law such as the territorial sovereignty of states, pacta sunt servanda, friendly neighborly relations and prohibition of discrimination.

Unfortunately, what we see today in article D of the Constitution is a disregard of these principles. Equivocal references to matters that fall under the exclusive jurisdiction of neighboring states, such as development of communities, safeguarding of fundamental rights, and local self-government are in no way in agreement with the principles mentioned above. The idea of collective rights for national minorities, stated in the same article D, goes against the international legal standards through which our countries agreed to pursue the protection of national minorities and undermines the very system built by the Council of Europe in this regard. This system is explicit in saying that rights foreseen by the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, which we together agreed to, are of individual nature and concern persons belonging to national minorities, and not collectivities.

As you might know, I myself have requested two months ago a clarification from the Chairman-in-Office of the Committee of Ministers, Mr. Ahmet Davutoglu. The written question I have submitted was related to the political statements made by Hungarian senior officials who stated that Hungary supports and asks granting collective rights.

The reply of Mr. Davutoglu stressed that the Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, including the Vienna Declaration of 9 October 1993, and the Committee of Minister’s Resolution (97) 10 are making reference solely to „the rights of persons belonging to national minorities”.

In my opinion, promoting collective rights for national minorities will undermine all our achievements in this field.

Of course, we all know that, under the international law, indigenous peoples who are in a minority position enjoy specific collective rights with regards to exploitation of natural resources in a traditional manner. However, trying to extrapolate that idea to national minorities is counterproductive.

My final thought concerns the confusion that surrounds the concept of citizenship, in the light of the new Hungarian Constitution and amendments to the Hungarian law on citizenship. There are doubts that citizenship appears to be possibly granted solely on ethnic grounds and in a collective manner. This would be a clear breach of the CoE’s convention on nationality, which stipulates that nationality is a legal bond between the citizen and the state, which should not be related to the person’s ethnic origin.

These points are to a great extent based upon the opinion released by the Venice Commission, on the 20th of June 2011. This document provides in-depth and substantive analysis of the provisions of the new Hungarian Constitution.

These are just thoughts that, I hope, deserve attention, further discussion and clarification. I remain convinced that we must pursue such discussions in good faith and with an aim at preserving dialogue and friendly relations between all member states of the Council of Europe.

I remain at your disposal for further questions.
Sincerely yours,
Titus Corlăţean
Member of the Romanian Delegation to PACE
Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Senate of Romania

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25.06.2011. 09:09

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