The country’s territorial reorganization sparks disagreement

The Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania supports its own project for reorganizing Romania into 16 regions, and not 8 big regions, as the Democratic Liberal Party (PDL) project provides.

The discussions between the President of the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians, Kelemen Hunor, and the vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies, Ioan Oltean, have focused on organizational issues in the county of Satu-Mare, according to the Radio Romania editor, Cătălin Purcaru.

However, the President of UDMR stated that the Union will not support the PDL project which provides the division of Romania into eight regions.

Kelemen Hunor kept his declarations regarding the territorial organization into 16 regions.

The UDMR President declared that ‘the project regarding the conversion of the eight development regions into eight big counties cannot be supported by UDMR. No county organization, or some other territorial organization supports this project’.

The National Liberal Party (PNL) is willing to discuss this over with the UDMR.

The vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies, Ioan Oltean states that ‘a political committee having the duty to discuss and find the resolution to solve the issue in question is being established’.

Moreover, Ioan Oltean said that "the UDMR and the PNL together have enough sources to identify a solution for Romania, for the reorganization of Romania’s territory".

It is expected that in the coming days the discussions between the UDMR and the PDL representatives will continue the following days on the topic of the territorial reorganization of Romania.

The opposition states that the reorganization "is unconstitutional"

The National Liberal Party President, Crin Antonescu, claims that Traian Băsescu’s decision to reorganize Romania administrative-territorially is unconstitutional, and the citizens should be consulted in this regard.

Crin Antonescu declared that the Social Liberal Union (USL) to reorganize Romania supports the coexistence of counties with regions.

Crin Antonescu states that "an organization on a certain calendar, with certain attributions and a certain logic to it, in which, after let’s say, the French model, should coexist with the counties at an administrative level, and this way, counties are maintained and regions should be created additionally".

On top of this, the PDL leader declared that "the UDMR made its choice regarding the unexpected and unconstitutional initiative belonging to Traian Băsescu to force the Government now to create eight regions by the next day, and of course the UDMR does not agree, because none of the eight regions has Hungarian majority".

The USL accepted the invitation from Traian Băsescu to participate in the consultations on the topic of reorganizing Romania administrative-territorially.

Translated by: Manuela Stancu
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University