The Ministry of Foreign Affairs announces in a statement that it “firmly disapproves” of the comments posted on Facebook on Monday by Zsolt Nemeth, the president of the Commission for Foreign Policy in the Hungarian Parliament, in which he claims that Romania would limit the right to fly the Szekler flag.
“The Szekler flag will fly on the facade of Hungarian public institutions until the Romanian state allows its free use throughout the territory of Romania! Come on, Szeklers! Let’s go to Transylvania!”, wrote Zsolt Nemeth (Fidesz) on Facebook.
The Hungarian ambassador in Bucharest was summoned to the headquarters of the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday morning, in order to inform him of the position of the Romanian side, according to the quoted communiqué.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs points out that Romanian legislation enshrines the right of people belonging to all 20 national minorities to use their specific symbols in private, as well as in public, within specific cultural and religious manifestations.
Regarding the Szekler flag, the MAE shows that in Romania there is no administrative-territorial unit with this name and, as a result, no specific official insignia.
The Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs points out that any administrative-territorial authority in Romania has the right to establish its own insignia, which must be representative of the entire population resident in that administrative-territorial unit.
We remind you that UDMR submitted in 2020 a legislative project that would allow the Szekler flag to be legally flown next to the Romanian flag. The project was definitively rejected by the Chamber of Deputies in 2020.
High-ranking Hungarian officials, starting with Prime Minister Viktor Orban, have constantly in recent years referred to the autonomist symbols of the ethnic Hungarian population in Romania, as well as to revisionist historical symbols, such as the map of Greater Hungary.
