Finally! RMDSZ's foundation sidelined from naturalization process, a hundred employees to be laid off

At the end of the year, the role of the Eurotrans Foundation, set up by the RMDSZ (Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania), in simplified naturalization will come to an end, according to information obtained by Krónika, since the government led by Péter Magyar will no longer involve outside organizations in the process. From 2027, citizenship and civil registry matters for Hungarians in Transylvania will therefore be handled exclusively by Hungary's diplomatic missions in Romania. According to the paper's Monday article, the Tisza government made it clear to the RMDSZ after April's parliamentary election that it would most likely withdraw its foundation's role in the process.

Zoltán Levente Nagy, the foundation's president, confirmed to the paper in writing only that, in line with the agreement, they will continue handling naturalization-related tasks until the end of the year.

"The funding needed to provide this service and to operate is secured until the end of this year. We have submitted a request to the Hungarian government for support with next year's operating costs, but we have not yet received a response"

– Krónika quoted the president as saying. According to the paper, Eurotrans's roughly one hundred employees have already been told that the vast majority of them will be laid off. The Hungarian government has not yet publicly announced the foundation's exclusion; the information so far comes only from Krónika.

The RMDSZ set up the foundation in 2004, which became involved in the naturalization process in February 2015 under an agreement with the Prime Minister's Office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Budapest. The agreement essentially institutionalized existing practice, since RMDSZ's local branches had already been taking part in the simplified naturalization procedure; Eurotrans began its work in September 2015 with 19 offices and 70 employees. Since then, the organization has helped applicants across Transylvania free of charge, through 25 offices and regular visits to rural areas, putting together everything from photographs to translations needed for their application files. It also assisted with applications for the maternity allowance, the baby bond, and the Umbilical Cord Program, and served as the channel through which Hungarian citizens in Romania could register births, marriages, deaths and name changes in Hungary's civil registry.

According to the president, working together with the consulates general, they helped 140,000 Hungarians from Transylvania prepare their naturalization files, compiled more than 50,000 civil registry applications, and processed the applications of 40,000 families under the Umbilical Cord Program, launched in 2018. The service was free for applicants, but it brought the foundation substantial funding from the Hungarian state. According to public data from the Bethlen Gábor Fund Management, Eurotrans received a total of 928 million forints this year in three installments and 950 million forints last year; an April article by Átlátszó Erdély, based on a freedom-of-information request, put the total support received from the Prime Minister's Office and the Bethlen Gábor Fund since 2015 at around 3.16 billion forints.

According to Krónika, the foundation's sidelining is primarily linked not to naturalization but to the role it played in collecting postal ballots. Before April's election, Eurotrans helped register Romanian Hungarians who do not have a Hungarian address, took part in distributing and collecting ballot packages, and handed the envelopes over to the consulates general in Cluj-Napoca (Kolozsvár) and Miercurea Ciuc (Csíkszereda). Because of this, the RMDSZ was accused of acting in the postal voting process not as a neutral administrator but as part of Fidesz's campaign machine.

On 21 April, Péter Magyar received Hunor Kelemen in Budapest and told him that his government would have the irregularities surrounding the postal vote investigated, that the voting rules also needed to be reviewed, and he claimed to have received assurances that the RMDSZ would in future stay out of Hungarian party politics. Hunor Kelemen, for his part, said that the alliance had only provided technical assistance in safely delivering the envelopes and that he knew of no case that had affected the course of the election.

Eurotrans's fate echoes that of the democracy centers run by the Transylvanian Hungarian National Council, led by László Tőkés, which became involved in naturalization in 2011 and then closed in March 2023 after the Orbán government of the time withdrew their state funding. As a result of the change, all administrative work will fall to the consulates general in Cluj-Napoca and Miercurea Ciuc, as well as the embassy in Bucharest, which, according to Krónika, could make it harder for those living in counties far from the consulates to maintain contact with the Hungarian state.

Ugar