The EU has recently enlarged to become a global player. This gave the EU some totally new traditions from now on. I'd like to gain some conceptual understanding about a few EU rules on this.

1. Why did the EU force some of the new EU members such as Slovakia and Hungary to re-accept their national borders? These borders are known to widely deviate from ethnic boundaries, locking Slovaks out into the Ukraine and Hungarians out into Slovakia.

2. The South-East European borders are defined by 20th century "peace" dictates from external super-powers, for the purpose of maintaining deep ethnic tensions. What interest does the EU have in maintaining this status quo?

3. How would the EU react if an EU ethnicity wanted to beak from its host country and re-join its mother country at the other side of the border, changing the border?

Thanks.

You seem strangely fixated on European ethnic differences...in a way, it must be noted, that most Europeans are not. What is your problem? I sense the shadow of a particular ethnic angst at work, couched within your singular brand of unreasoning insistence - spit it out, my gentle little friend!

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"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."

The ethnic issues and the issues concerning the national borders are some of the most difficult problems of the international politics.. I suppose, that the Europe have the following ways to respond to these problems:

1. Guaranteeing just and efficient governance.. This means guaranteeing that opression against ethnic groups will not happen.. Reducing the reasons to complain about the local goverment's governing reduces naturally the separatistic desires..

2. Setting the focus on inter-European cooperation instead of natiolistic interests of different ethnicities and states.. If people learn to consider them Europeans, their relations with other Europeans will be much more defined in the terms of cooperation instead of rivalry..

Also, if there are some artifical borders that are not viable, I wonder why we should maintain these borders.. This is a difficult issue, since it concerns national pride and national emotions.. Still, it is highly questionable, if any amount of pride can justify such artifical states that are only good in producing ethnic problems..

- BtD

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"Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."
[George Orwell, 1984]
"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."
[George Orwell, 1984]

Well, here it is: even though I don't live in Europe any more, I want Hungarian children to speak Hungarian (my origin), like German children speak German, English children speak English, and so on ... . However even in recent years (I mean in this 21st century), Hungarians are being pushed out of their land that got locked out of Hungary by the 1920 peace dictates of Trianon. For a concrete example: 200,000 Hungarians were "strongly inspired" to emigrate from Romania in the past 6 years, and this is on top of the other 500,000+ that were pushed out in the 20th century. Austria-Hungary has never done such an ethnic clensing.

Today, Romania is becoming an EU member. It continues to operate a racist national school curriculum, and its judicial system is totally dependent on its racist executive branch of government. (It is OK in Romania if a policeman beats you up at a police station for being Hungarian.) But various official EU reports I find on the Internet also have references to these problems.

Considering that this pattern has been going on for the last 80 years at various degrees of intensity, what solution can be found for a lasting peace here? This is the reality the east of the EU is/will bringing to the table. The solution I can think of for a lasting peace is to remove some of Romania's control over Transylvanian life. I am searching for ideas from as many politically interested people as I can.

Does the EU have policies to enforce such guaranties?

This is totally right! I think this may sound in the interest of federalization of Europe. I think it is a threat that some countries like the above-mentioned Romania, and others like Holland and France place nationalism above federalism. Would a marketing effort for the EU federalism change this? What can be done for a stronger European identity?

I think it is that national pride that drives these Trianon countries (Romania, Serbia, Slovakia) into their racist policies. I am searching for formulae to tackle this. I think excluding them from the EU would increase their racist pride, so treating them as if they were EU members (in this respect) would give grounds to do something.

I feel (and a lot of others feel, who have no time or English command to write), that the Hungarian ethnicity of the EU is being systematically eliminated. As EU members, we Hungarians are searching for solutions to this continuing teritorial and racial problem. I am looking for ideas ... . Please write everything that comes to mind.

Thanks.

Very selective memory. What about the forced Maygarization of the ethnic minorities (and in certain areas, majorities) which happened to fall into the Hungarian sphere of the Austro-Hungarian empire?
Both sides have broken the rules, so to speak.

I'm not going to defend the borders drawn after WWI, in my opinion they are largely indefensible. (The politics behind the borders is astounding) However, the borders have been drawn, and for the greater part they reflect accurate ethnic boundaries with consideration to geographic and political realities.
Unless "strongly inspired" is an epic euphemism, it does not constitute ethnic cleansing. Source?
Romanian addition to the EU will probably be delayed, Bulgaria looks to be in before Romania. (They were both supposed to be added in the same year) Issues such as this are the reason for that delay.
Removing control as in Hungarian annexation?
The problem with East European ethnic boundaries is that they do not go in straight lines. There will be pockets, no feasible border redrawings will fix that.
Economic arm twisting. Depends how much of a domestic storm any issue would generate.
I agree with BtD, and do advocate federalism. But at this point, it is not a realistic option. It is not just the Netherlands and France, but I would say the majority of EU citizens would not support a more federal EU.
Much more integration, and overall willingness for integration will be required before a federal structure can be talked of reasonably. The seats of the Euro Parliament are already a huge issue of contention between most states.
Hungarian ethnicity of EU is being systematically eliminated?
Hungary only recently joined the EU, and may leave if it wants to. I think most Hungarians will agree that joining was an economically wise move.
As far as I am aware, Hungary does not even dispute its borders.

As for a solution, joint political pressure from EU states. Using EU membership as a lever if necessary. But I do think you are exaggerating the extent of the problem.

Yes, both Hungarians and Romanians "broke the rules". I am surprised that Europeans equate the reduction of Romanian control with an annexation into Hungary. Most young Hungarians and the Hungarian government don't want that, it would only import the ethnic problems back into Hungary.

Economic measures against Romania and its exclusion from the EU would only increase its racist tendencies and corruption. Also, Romania's cheap labor market is a destination to outsource EU jobs to. So, like in Asia, economic measures may not work against them.

I was not clear when I wrote to reduce Romanian control. I meant that the EU would not only monitor the Romanian judiciary, law enforcement, and school curriculum in Transylvania, but rather replace it with the experienced EU executives, this way the EU would establish a tradition of law there that Romania never had. (This could be financed from Transylvanian income taxes.) I'm afraid, if the EU does not do anything drastic, then the patterns of the Romanian behavior will only keep repeating themselves.

Does this seem go too far from the EU point of view?

I =/= Europe. And I do not believe most Europeans would agree with me.
In most cases "reduction of control" has been used as a blatant euphemism for annexation. What does "reduction of control" then mean? Autonomy for Transylvania within Romania?
Romania needs European economic aid. They are not trying to join because EU membership sounds nice. Corruption and severe poverty are very real concerns.
EU monitors? Never going to happen.
You still haven't given anything beyond your word that there actually is a problem of that scale in Romania.
There is no EU point of view. Beyond vague ideas of fostering economic and democratic growth. The EU is primarily economic, not political. People continue to fail to make this distinction.
But for monitors there would have to be rampant and blatant abuse, and that would reach European newsmedia. So far, it hasn't.

Romania operated an autonomy for Transylvania in the 1950s. As a result, all ethnic tentions disappeared at that time. When they abolished the autonomy in the 1960s, the ethnic tentions restarted. Autonomy may work today again but the times now may be somewhat different. Now a central governance from Brussels would probably be more ideal, following the model of the London governance of Northern Ireland.

Romanian anti-ethnic policies are low-key (but very effective) for the purpose to avoid mainstream media and a Kosovo-like scenario.

However, even the newly elected Romanian president, Basescu(?) declared on national radio a few times that the judicial system is totally corrupt, that over a 1000+ cases ended up in various European courts this year and 114 of them already reached a judgement against Romania.

Also, Hungarian statistics show a sudden immigration of 200,000 Transylvanian Hungarians into Hungary the last 5 years, only a little less than that immediately after 1920.

The Greater Romania Party that has ~10% representation in the parliament prints a racist newspaper that devotes at least one page every issue to bash Hungarians of Transylvania.

Also there are less spectacular evidences of abuse, like the Hungarian who just got out of prison after 10 years. He was jailed for being Hungarian in the 1990s Maros (Muresh) county ethnic clashes that were started by the then Romanian government.

The current Europe-friendly Romanian government may open a lighter chapter, but the serious danger is in the tendencies: Romanian national school curriculum has been actively indoctrinating Romanian children against Hungarians in a racist manner for over a decade now. As a result, more teenagers grow up who rather turn the war of words into a war of guns in Romania.

What would be worse than any war is if Romania successfully got rid of the Hungarians of Transylvania, without anybody noticing it, just like they got rid of the Saxons and the Schwabes.