Juncker celebrates centenary of ‘Greater Romania’
October 26th, 2018A pro-government columnist condemns European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker for referring to the centenary of the ‘great Romanian unification’ as a European holiday.
Magyar Idők’s György Pilhál asks whether Juncker knows that Hungary is also in Europe and that his remark offended 15 million Hungarians for whom the loss of millions of Hungarians in Transylvania after World War One was a tragedy.
Addressing a session of the European Parliament on Tuesday (which happened to be a Hungarian national holiday) Mr. Juncker said ’we will celebrate that Romanian and European holiday, for anything connected to Romania is always important for Europe as well’. He described Romania as ‘a creator of stability in a tormented region’ and praised it for supporting the creation of a European Prosecutor’s Office, unlike ‘even some founding members’. On 1 December, Romania celebrates the anniversary of an assembly of Transylvanian Romanians who decided to join Romania (as promised by the Allies from 1916 onwards, in exchange for Romania switching sides in the First World War).
The Alba Julia declaration, Pilhál remarks, included principles like full equality for all nationalities, the freedom of press and association etc. which were not put into practice afterwards. Pilhál wonders if Mr. Juncker knows about that history or whether MEPs just witnessed another ‘sciatica attack’ (a reference to a NATO event in July when he had to be supported by NATO leaders, and his spokesman said that Juncker was suffering from sciatica and did not stumble because he was drunk).