Romanian blogger Dan Tanasă – now a Member of the Chamber of Deputies of Romania via the Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR) – has lost an important legal battle against Hungarian inscriptions. The Bucharest Court of Appeals has ruled that Brassó/Brașov County authorities will not be forced to remove the bilingual (Romanian-Hungarian) inscription from the exit sign at the border with Kovászna/Covasna County (via Krónika).
This is a major win for multiculturalism and a major loss for Romanian nationalism.
The Dan Tanasă-led association, Asociația Civică pentru Demnitate în Europa (ironically, the “Civic Association for Dignity in Europe” or ADEC), initiated a series of lawsuits against institutions led by ethnic Hungarians. The Brassó County authorities also appeared on the radar of this alleged association, as the county exit sign contained a Hungarian inscription, which bothered Tănasă and his teammates.
The dignity the association is fighting for is measured in Romanian-only inscriptions: Tanasă and his followers cannot accept the fact that nationalities other than Romanians live in Transylvania and that they have the legal right to use their symbols and native language.
In the case of Brassó County authorities, Tănasă’s weak argument was that the threshold of 20% minority presence in the county was not met, so the authority had no legal right to place a Hungarian inscription on the exit sign wishing a good trip to motorists leaving Brassó County and entering Kovászna/Covasna County.
In the first instance, judges ruled in favor of the Dan Tanasă-led Asociația Civică pentru Demnitate în Europa (ADEC), forcing Adrian Veștea, president of Brassó/Brașov County Council, to remove the Hungarian text from the county exit signs at the county border with Kovászna/Covasna County. The second (and now final) ruling, however, is that the Hungarian inscription should remain.
Title image: The bilingual exit sign at Brassó County’s border with Kovászna/Covasna County. Image source: Székelyhon
