In recent months, several worrysome cases have highlighted that anti-Hungarian incidents are still present in Romania, both in public life and in everyday situations.
In an incident in a shop in Cluj County, a Hungarian man was verbally and physically assaulted for speaking his mother tongue, Hungarian to his wife. Such attacks reveal that exercising minority language rights in Romania is still not always safe; on the contrary, it can even result in physical violence.
In another case, in Cluj-Napoca, a passer-by told a woman speaking Hungarian that she should “speak Hungarian at home, not on the street.” This hostile, chauvinistic remark reflects a social climate in which the public use of the Hungarian language is seen by some not as a natural and constitutional right, but as a provocation.
Ethnic tensions have also appeared in political discourse. Former Romanian Energy Minister Andrei Gerea expressed concern about the sale of the Napolact dairy company after its parent company, FrieslandCampina, allowed one of its Hungarian subsidiaries to play a role in a development process in Romania. According to Gerea, the presence of economic actors linked to the Hungarian state in Romania could pose a “strategic risk.” This rhetoric clearly goes beyond economic realities and incites against Hungarians on political grounds, fuelling hostility toward the Hungarian community while also contradicting the fundamental principles of EU law.
Dan Tanasă, an MP from the AUR party, recently made a statement that could further increase ethnic tensions. At a public event, he said that Romania could “lose” Harghita, Covasna, and Mureș counties because, in his view, “the interests of the Romanian state are no longer being upheld” there.
According to Tanasă, the “excessive presence” of the Hungarian community and its “revisionist ambitions” pose a threat to the territorial integrity of the country. Such rhetoric, especially from a member of parliament, is not only irresponsible but also destructive for Romanian–Hungarian coexistence. Moreover, the claims he made belong to the realm of fantasy and serve only the purpose of inciting hatred.
Furthermore, in a recently published video, a YouTuber named Bogdan Lupea made extremist statements that fall into the category of open incitement against minority communities. In the video, he declared that if a politician truly represents national interests, then “the first thing they must do is remove all minority representatives from the Romanian parliament.”
He also labelled minority representatives as “anti-national” and declared that “there is no place for minorities in parliament,” adding that Romanians should “be given priority for all jobs over foreigners.” The video also included calls for the need to cultivate a “patriotism cult” and glorification of memory politics rooted in a nationalist past.
Lupea literally stated: “We cannot be governed in parliament by Hungarians, Jews, Gypsies, or Roma; we must be governed by Romanians.” He also added: “I will primarily support the politician who says: minorities out of parliament.”
The above cases clearly show that members of the Hungarian community in Transylvania are still regularly confronted with linguistic and ethnic discrimination today. These stories not only reflect individual hate speech actions, but also point to a deeper social problem: the fact that acceptance of linguistic diversity and respect for minority rights are still not self-evident in Romanian public life and everyday reality.
The Mikó Imre Legal Aid Service has taken the necessary steps in each case and has also drawn attention to the violations of linguistic rights suffered by the Hungarian community in Romania, as well as to the growing sense of fear within the community.
Erika Benkő, director of the Mikó Imre Legal Aid Service, said in connection with the cases:
“I found it important to summarize these attacks and abuses against Hungarians in Transylvania in a detailed newsletter and draw attention to them. We saw that Romanian civil society reacted in an exemplary manner in the case of harassment and abuse of migrant workers in Romania. We would like to see the same reaction when the rights of Hungarians are violated, and we would like every xenophobic manifestation to be condemned in the same way, because that is the normal attitude. This is why our service continuously carries out awareness-raising work, reminding both Romanian and international public opinion that unfortunately, Hungarians in Transylvania are still often the targets of attacks because of their language and identity. Since we believe that, alongside legal sanctions, social solidarity is the long-term solution, we consider it important to keep these issues on the agenda.”