The former spokesman of the Ciolos Government, Liviu Iolu, announced on Saturday his candidacy for EP elections. He says he wants to contribute to drafting an effective plan to fight against disinformation and to limit the consequences of fake news and disinformation. “I am a PLUS member for a few…
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11 November 1918: after four years, three months and two weeks, the World War One (The Great War) ended. It included Europe, the USA, as well as countries from Asia, Pacific, Middle East and Africa. With 20 million deaths and 21 million wounded, WW1 was one of the deadliest conflicts in the history of the human race. On the East front in Europe, 800,000 Romanian soldiers fought on the Entente side and 335,706 of them have fallen in combat, while 130,000 civilians also lost their lives. Modern Romania was built on their ultimate sacrifice. Earlier that year, on 11 February, the United States President Woodrow Wilson announced his famous principle of self-determination: “National aspirations must be respected; people may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. Self-determination is not a mere phrase; it is an imperative principle of action.” Based on this principle, on 27 March the National Council (the Parliament) of Bessarabia, ancient part of the medieval Romanian Principality of Moldova and annexed by Russia in 1812, proclaimed union with the Kingdom of Romania. On 28 November, the General Congress of Bukovina, also separated from medieval Moldova and attached by force in 1774 to the Habsburg Empire, voted for union with Romania. And on 1st December 1918, the representatives of Transylvanian Romanians gathered in the capital city Alba Iulia and voted the Union. The representatives of the Transylvanian Saxons approved the act on 15 December in the city of Medias. On 19 February 1919, Baron Joseph Fay, speaking in the Romanian Parliament on behalf of the Szekelys living in Transylvania, expressed their support for the union with the Kingdom of Romania. A glimpse on the history of Transylvania shows that the region was part of the Dacian Kingdom (1st – 2nd centuries) and the Roman Dacia (2dn – 3rd centuries). Saxon historian Konrad Gündisch says that findings from the 4th to the 7th centuries – Roman coins, other objects with Latin inscription and early Christian artifacts – prove that Christian Daco-Roman (Proto-Romanian) population remained and flourished in Dacia after the Romans withdrawal in 271. German historian Kurt Horedt dates the entering of the Hungarians in Transylvania in the period between the 10th century and the 13th century. According to Gesta Hungarorum (Latin for The Deeds of the Hungarians), а medieval work written in the 12th century, when Hungarians came into Transylvania, they found well-structured Romanian principalities whose leaders Gelu, Glad and Menumorut they defeated in several battles. After the Battle of Mohács in 1526, the Principality of Transylvania emerged as a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire. In 1711 the Habsburg Empire took control of Transylvania, and in 1867 Transylvania was incorporated into the Kingdom of Hungary as part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, until 1918. Fényes Elek, a 19th-century Hungarian statistician, estimated in 1842 that in the population of Transylvania for the years 1830-1840 the majority were 62.3% Romanians and 23.3% Hungarians. According to the 2011 Romanian census, the ethnic groups in Transylvania are Romanians – 70.62%, Hungarians (including Szekelys) – 17.92%, Roma – 3.99%, Ukrainians – 0.63%, Germans – 0.49%, other – 0.77%, while 5.58% have not declared their ethnicity. The Great Union of 1918 represented the accomplishment of Romanians’ dream for national unity, which was first fulfilled in 1600, when Prince Michael the Brave united the three provinces which make up today’s Romania – Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania. Michael, ruler of Wallachia, marched into Transylvania and, with help from the Székelys, defeated a Hungarian army, entered Alba Iulia and in 1599 became ruler of Transylvania. Then he crossed the Carpathian Mountains in Moldova, reached the capital city Iaşi and was declared Prince of Moldova. In a document dated 6 July 1600, he referred to himself as “ruler of Wallachia and of Transylvania and of the whole country of Moldova”. The union lasted for only a short period of time, as Michael was assassinated on 9 August 1601. As historian Constantin C. Giurescu remarked, “Never in Romanian history was a moment of such highness and glory so closely followed by bitter failure.” But Michael the Brave remained in the minds of Romanians as the first legendary unifier, and his vision became the goal for which generations fought and finally achieved in 1918. Loyal to the principles of the Great Union, on 28 June 1919 Romania was one of the 44 states that signed the Covenant the League of Nations, when the organization was established by the Treaty of Versailles. Since then, Romania developed and consolidated a strong tradition of multilateral diplomacy, with high professional standards set up by Foreign Minister Nicolae Titulescu, who was twice elected President of the League of Nations (1930 and 1931) and also served for ten years as ambassador to the United Kingdom. In 1967, Romanian Foreign Minister Corneliu Manescu repeated Titulescu’s success and was elected President of the UN General Assembly, being the first representative from an Eastern European country to hold such a high dignity. In the 100 years that have passed since the historical moments of 1918, Romania has undergone a multitude of transformations, ranging from different forms of government to different levels of socio-economic development, and from democracy to dictatorship and back to democracy. Today, it has diplomatic relations with 190 states, is a member of the European Union and NATO, while the United Nations remains a centerpiece of its foreign policy. Furthermore, during the first semester of 2019, Romania will hold the Presidency of the EU Council. Much still remains to be done in Romania, but during all these transformations one thing always remained constant: its long term commitment for peace, justice and development. This is also the motto of Romania’s candidature for a non-permanent seat in the Security Council for the period 2020-2021. *Ambassador Ion Jinga is Romania’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, New York
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On November 11, 1918, at 11.00 AM, the Compiègne truce between the Allied and Associated Powers and Germany came into force. Thus, the World War I, or the “Great War”, as this conflict is also known, exceeding the horrors of everything that the world has ever known before, has been ended. The war was a large-scale seism, that has deeply disturbed the life of the old continent, the place from where it started and which experienced the most fierce confrontations. The European aristocratic empires that seemed to be unwavering, collapsed (Take Ionescu was speaking about a “cascade of thrones”), important social movements took place in many regions, violence continued to be in the pipeline, millions of people were dislocated from their home places, suffering and disease continued to cause ravages. In a word, the pre-war world, which sometimes was called “la belle époque”, maybe wrongly, has collapsed, and another world was being built on its ruins, and one of its coordinating principles was “the nationalities” principle. It functioned during the whole 19th century and was strongly revived by the US President Woodrow Wilson, in his famous peace program published on January 8, 1918. Besides reasserting the right to national self-determination, President Wilson also came with a new view on the international relations, according to which the collective co-operation and security could prevent a new cataclysm like the one of the years 1914-1918. The restructuring of the political and territorial map was materialized in the realization of the national aspirations of the nations from the east, center and south of the continent. One by one, the Finns, Estonians, Georgians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Serbians, Croatians, Slovenes, gathered, according to their will, in self-governing political bodies, which then had their own life. Among them, there were also the Romanians, who, during the year of 1918, managed to gather, unite under the same state, by the acts of union from Chisinau (March 27/April 9), Cernauti (November 15/28) and Alba Iulia (November 18/December 1). Remembering them could lead us to the conclusion that everything was relatively easy, without sufferings and sacrifices. This view is far from the truth and does not take into account the very special complexity of the situation of the years 1914-1918. The start of the war found the Romanian nation fragmented. Many Romanians were enrolled in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in the Russian Empire, while the two great states were in opposite, belligerent coalitions. They were forced to fight, under a foreign flag, since the beginning of the war, sometimes being put face to face by the dynamic of the confrontations. Also, there was the Romanian state or the Old Kingdom, according to the terminology of that era, a well-defined player of the international stage, which was, since 1883, an ally of the Central Powers, which included Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy. Of course, the political elite and the public opinion from the south and east of the Carpathians, as well as those in the territories included in the two empires which now were rival, were concerned about the future. The options were different, some of them acting in order to join the Central Powers, thus maintaining the trend of the external orientation that existed until then, while others were strongly advocating for joining the Entente. The two orientations were taking into account the national unity, but the directions, the objectives and the alliances were different. The first was considering that bringing back Bessarabia, which territory was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1812, was a priority. On the contrary, the second orientation, which was for joining the Entente, was considering that the priority objective were the Romanians under the domination of the dualist monarchy, namely Transylvania and Bucovina. The arguments brought by the two groups were impressing, but the one which outlined the decision, beyond the political calculations that were more or less elaborated, was the will of the overwhelming majority of the population, which firmly stated its desire to reunite the Romanian territories included in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The war waged by Romania had a sinuous course and defeats alternated with victories, and in the end, due to the collapse of the Romanovs’ Empire, the peace with the Central Powers was signed in Bucharest (April 24/May 7, 1918). However, the same event allowed Bessarabia to go through a process of national awakening and institutional organization, and in the end the union with Romania was decided. The end of the war gave the possibility to the nations that were oppressed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire to have access to their own national life, and Romanians in here decided to reunite under the same state. Thus, 1st of December 1918, when this process ended, became “the astral hour of the Romanian nation”. That’s why the Parliament has rightly decided in 1990, through the Law no.10, that this day will become Romania’s National Day. The decision was confirmed by the Constitution adopted by the Constituent Assembly on November 21, 1991, and came into force after it was approved by the national referendum of December 8, 1991. Article 12, par.2 of the fundamental law states: “Romania’s National Day is 1st of December”. This provision was also maintained in the Constitution that was reviewed by the Law no.429/2003 and approved by the referendum of October 18-19, 2003. It was for the first time in Romania’s history when the National Day was expressly stated in the Constitution. The previous fundamental laws, namely those of 1866, 1923, 1948, 1952, and 1965, didn’t do this. * Romania’s unification was decided by highly representative bodies, democratically appointed from all the social levels and categories: the Country Council in Bessarabia, the General Congress in Bucovina, the Great Assembly in Transylvania and Banat. First of all, those who entered within these bodies and expressed their opinions were the Romanians, as well as the representatives of certain minorities, some of them adhering to the acts of union (the case of the Poles from Bessarabia and Bucovina), others choosing to…
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