Protest in Victoria Square in Bucharest

Around 150 people protested on Sunday in Victoriei Square in Bucharest against the new Administrative Code, which was adopted by the Government through an Emergency Ordinance and came into force on Friday. Main dissatisfaction of protesters is that this normative act creates the premises that the Hungarian language unconstitutionally becomes the second official language in Romania.

RRA Correspondent Felicia Mocanu asked some of the people who went out on the streets about the reason they protest.

- ”To attend rally against this Government Ordinance, which creates real possibilities for legalization of the second national language”.

- ”I came here because it is impossible for a constitutional country which has the Constitution written in a single language - the Romanian language, to legalize the second official language (..)”

- ”We support the decisions of the Constitutional Court, which last year rejected this draft law, and now we see it entered again through the back door, as a government ordinance”.

Administrative Code grants local public authorities the right to decide on the use of a minority language in public institutions and situations where percentage of citizens who speak the respective minority language is less than 20%.

Organizer of the protest, Mihai Tirnoveanu - President of Calea Neamului Association and Vice-President of the Romanians' Civic Forum in Covasna, Harghita and Mures - Government Emergency Ordinance was issued by the Government at the pressure of the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR) and of the Hungarian state and is "an act of national betrayal".

Source:RRA,RRI.Translated by Miruna Matei