According to a newly adopted decree, the ethnic Hungarian Csángó community of the Moldavian region of Rumania will again have the chance to study Hungarian language and literature. Beginning September, various Csángó associations will be able to request Hungarian-language classes on behalf of Csángó children. This is an important detail, since previously only parents could request this form of education and many withdrew petitions in the past after harassment by the authorities. Beginning in the 1950s, Hungarian-language schools for this community were gradually eliminated, including those at the elementary level, leading to a severe decline in knowledge of the native language. [Népújság (Targu Mures/Marosvásárhely), Jul. 27, 2000]

President Emil Constantinescu announced his withdrawal from the presidential race scheduled to take place with national elections in November. He pointed to continued corruption in the country and the lack of fairness in political campaigning as the motivations behind his decision because these occur at the expense of much-needed social and economic reforms. He also said that he will continue to support Prime Minister Mugur Isarescu’s reform package. Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Rumania (DAHR) President Béla Markó called Constantinescu’s decision one of “great political and moral courage.” The President thought that a center-of-right candidate would have a better chance at defeating former President Iliescu in November, said Markó [Szabadság (Cluj/Kolozsvár), Jul. 19, 2000]

Hungary’s newly appointed ambassador to Rumania, István Ijgyártó, presented his credentials today to President Emil Constantinescu. The ambassador announced that his priorities for the next four years include: opening newer Hungarian consulates in the country, boosting bilateral economic relations and opening more border crossing points between the two countries. [Szabadság (Cluj/Kolozsvár), Jul. 17, 2000]

Former Rumanian Foreign Minister Adrian Severin was elected President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). He is the first East European politician to hold a leading position within the Organization. Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Rumania (DAHR) Senator György Frunda pointed out that Severin is a politician who in the past has never been reluctant to publicly support his country's ethnic minorities either at home or abroad. He was strongly supportive of the often discussed and controversial Council of Europe Recommendation No. 1201 on minorities, which was ultimately appended to the 1996 Rumanian-Hungarian Bilateral Agreement, said Frunda, who added that Severin is for establishing a Hungarian-language state university. [Szabadság (Cluj-Kolozsvár), Jul. 11, 2000]

The Cluj/Kolozsvár City Council approved 100 million Lei to fill the pit surrounding the King Mathias statue located in the city's main square. The city’s ultra-nationalistic mayor, Gheorghe Funar, originally began excavations in 1994, over the protests of the city’s ethnic Hungarian community for whom King Mathias is a preeminent national symbol. The mayor’s aim was to unearth Roman-era ruins thereby “archeologically proving” the Roman origin of the Rumanian people. Ioan Piso, Director of the History Museum, expressed his skepticism about the success of the current project since "the first attempt to fill the pit last year ended in failure due to the fact that employees from the Public Works Maintenance Company stole tons of the soil that was delivered to fill the pit." [Szabadság (Cluj/Kolozsvár), Jul. 12, 2000]

With less than half of its membership present and voting, the senate of the Babes-Bolyai University adopted a new charter. The charter does not contain the right to establish the three independent minority language divisions within the structure of the school that the institution’s Hungarian community had requested, namely ones for (i) Natural Sciences and Mathematics, (ii) Humanities and History, (iii) Law and Economics. Although all present ethnic Hungarian members of the senate abstained from voting, the ethnic Rumanian majority adopted the document. The ethnic Hungarian Deputy Dean, Zoltán Kása, pointed that while the charter does not contain a provision on establishing independent minority language faculties, it doesn’t forbid them either and hopefully in time the ethnic Rumanian majority will allow it. [Szabadság (Cluj-Kolozsvár), Jul. 10 and 12, 2000]