Deputy PM: Sending Transylvania Hungarian deputies to EP ‘necessary, important’
Promoting the interests of the Hungarian minority in Romania requires that there should be Hungarians from Transylvania in the European Parliament, Hungary's deputy PM Zsolt Semjen told a forum in Bors, in north-western Romania, late on Friday.
Semjen pointed to an expected high turnout of voters at the upcoming EP elections, and said “every Hungarian vote counts”. “If Transylvanian Hungarians cannot win a mandate in the EP, our interests will not be promoted and values protected so well,” he said.
He said it was crucial that an ethnic Hungarian deputy should speak up in the EP against an MEP of Romania’s “anti-Hungarian” AUR party, he said.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban “needs at least two deputies” delegated by the ethnic Hungarian RMDSZ party “to better enforce the interests of the Hungarian nation,” Semjen said.
The Hungarian government will provide Transylvania Hungarians and RMDSZ with every assistance; “we have always relied on you and you can always rely on us,” he said.
