President Klaus Iohannis declared, on Wednesday, after the meeting with his Hungarian counterpart, Katalin Novak, that in Romania the rights of all national minorities are respected and he emphasized that most topics related to inter-ethnic tensions are artificial and „inflated publicly” by some politicians, according to Agerpres.

„Obviously, there are issues that require more than a discussion when we talk about the rights of minorities in Romania, but allow me to start my answer by saying that in Romania the rights of all national minorities are respected, and even more, in Romania there are an example that we can present with pride: national minorities are represented in Parliament, even if numerically they do not obtain as many votes as are necessary for a mandate. This is called positive discrimination. It is our common interest and we discussed on widely this issue so that the rights of the Hungarian minority are fully respected, that they can live their culture, that they can use their mother tongue and so on. We agreed together that it is good for them to use the Romanian language as well,” said the presidente, at the Cotroceni Palace.

Iohannis pointed out that in Hungary and Romania there are politicians who want to profile themselves by exacerbating inter-ethnic tensions.

„It is regrettable, but we cannot ignore this and then these politicians who want to profile themselves, lest anyone think that they are looking for the good of a minority, come with arguments that cannot be shared by us. We believe that by discussing the problems that arise, by listening to each other, we can eliminate a lot of this tension. Most of the themes, we have to admit, are artificial, they are brought up and inflated publicly by politicians who want to use some existing differences to promote themselves. (.. .) Summa summarum, I emphasize that many of these tensions are artificial and by the involvement of both parties they can be considerably diminished in the interest of Romanians and ethnic Hungarians,” Klaus Iohannis said.

Agerpres