The decision to unite Transylvania with Romania, adopted on the 1^st of December 1918, contains nine points, which have the following ideas in their center:

1. “The National Assembly of all Romanians in Transylvania, Banat and the Hungarian Country” decreed the unification of these Romanians and the territories they inhabited with Romania.
2. Reserve the territories indicated above for provisional autonomy until the assembly is established.
3. The basic principles for the composition of the new Romanian state are issued.
4. It calls for the peace congress to ensure the justice and freedom of all large and small nations and to eliminate the war in international relations.
5. Greetings to the “brothers of Bucovina”, who had united with Romania three days before.
6. The nations liberated from the Austro-Hungarian yoke are welcomed. Honor the memory of Romanian heroes sacrificed for the freedom and unity of the Romanian nation.
7. It is thanked to the Allied Powers (Entente) for the civilization of the “barbarity claws” has escaped.
8. It is decided to set up the Great Romanian National Council as a representative of the “Romanian nation of Transylvania, Banat and the Hungarian Land”.

The only one of the nine articles that has sub-points (i.e. six) is the third one. These six sub-paragraphs concretize state-building principles: the national freedom of “co-inhabiting peoples”; the religious confession of all denominations in the state; universal, equal, direct and secret vote for both sexes from 21 years of age; freedom of the press, association, assembly and thought; radical agrarian reform; rights to industrial labor equivalent to those of the most advanced states in the West. The term autonomy is used twice in the text of that Resolution. The first use appears at the beginning of the act, namely in Article II: “The National Assembly reserves the indicated territories (Transylvania, Banat and the Hungarian Land1) provisional autonomy until the constitution, elected on the basis of universal suffrage”. As it can be seen, it is the decree of the autonomy of the territories inhabited mostly by Romanians, united with Romania (about 100,000 square km), territories viewed in their entirety.

Secondly, even in these territories, the Assembly proposed provisional autonomy, only until the assembly, elected by universal suffrage, intended to give the Kingdom of Romania a new Constitution. All these provisions were broadly respected, and Transylvania with the Banat and the Western Parties have definitively fallen into Romania, without any autonomy, only after a certain period of time. The first and most important decision of the National Assembly was not the provisional autonomy of the province (provinces), with the “decree” of their union with Romania. The nodal point of the document is precisely the unification of the respective Romanians and the mentioned territories with Romania. And this union was “decreed” by the 1228 delegates, democratically elected and possessors of official documents (“credentials”), representatives of all Romanians concerned. It is true that the decision-makers of the union, to their honor, deal extensively with the national and confessional minorities in Transylvania and their fate in the Kingdom of Romania, because the Romanians did not want to turn from oppressed to oppressors. Between the “fundamental principles of the constitution of the new Romanian state”, the National Assembly determined: “full national freedom for all cohabiting peoples” and “equal justification and full confessional autonomy for all denominations in the state.” “Full national freedom” is clearly explained without the possibility of parallel interpretations, and meant for the authors of the Resolution the right of the “co-inhabiting peoples” to “train, administer and judge in their own language”, “to be represented in the legislative bodies” of Romania, to be represented in the government of the country. The term “autonomous” here is an adjective and refers to “all confessions in the state” and not just to minority confessions.

What comments can be made on this document, from the perspective of a century of its development?

1. Nowhere in the text of the Resolution is any reference to the autonomy of any part of Transylvania according to ethnic criteria. In other words, Transylvania’s “historical autonomies”, including the “Szekler Land”, had been abolished by the Austro-Hungarian dualist state (more precisely by the parliament and the government in Budapest) in the second half of the nineteenth century.
2. The largest minority in Romania, the Hungarian (representing over 6% of the country’s population), can “train” in their own language on the territory of Romania, ranging from the kindergarten to the university, at the bachelor, master and doctoral levels.
3. The same Hungarian minority can be “administered” in its own language wherever it has a simple majority and where the governing bodies, from mayors to members of local councils, etc. are Hungarian. There is no mixed locality in Romania where minorities are not represented by vote, depending on the number.
4. The same Hungarian minority can “judge” in its own language where the conditions required by law are met. Any member of the Hungarian minority can speak before the Hungarian courts, assuring him, if necessary, a translator.

In other words, the moral right of the Hungarian minority leaders in Romania to question the Romanian state authorities about the full implementation of the union resolution of 1^st of December 1918 in Alba Iulia remains questionable for a very simple reason. The Hungarians, in their position as a global community, have never recognized the unification of Transylvania with Romania, explicitly and unequivocally, as did the Saxons, Swabians, Ukrainians, Roma, etc. What this means? It means the non-acceptance of the decree of December 1, 1918, issued by the absolute majority of the population of Transylvania, in accordance with all the international provisions then in force and ratified by the Paris Peace Conference of 1919-1920, then revalidated at the Peace Conference of 1946-1947, recognized by other documents of international legal value, both before and after 1989. In this case, the leaders of the Hungarian community who agreed and agree with this position (not all Hungarians!) lie not only outside the Romanian laws but also outside the international ones, and are not allowed to invoke a document that they do not accept in their essence. In other words, you cannot take from the resolution of the Alba Iulia Assembly just what you like. But even so, by arguing pro-domo, as it has been seen, Hungarian leaders are mistaken: this statement, legally binding only on the Union, does not foresee any autonomy for ethnic minorities in Transylvania.

Acad. Ioan-Aurel Pop,

President of the Romanian Academy

Source: Gazeta de Cluj (Translation TFP)