The Hungarian Foreign Ministry has announced on Tuesday that it rejects ‘all absurd claims’ that Hungary is waging a ‘propaganda war’ against Romania, after the Romanian Academy warned about the actions from Budapest aiming to counter the ceremonies to mark the 100th anniversary of the Great Union, MTI informs.
Hungarian news agency MTI approached the Ministry with regard to the fact that the Romanian media had portrayed Hungary’s Trianon 100 research group, which was awarded thirty million forints (EUR 96,000) within the framework of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences’ “Impetus” programme for young researchers for a five-year project on increasing, summarising and publishing knowledge about the Treaty of Trianon, as a promoter of “anti-Romanian” propaganda, the Hungarian Foreign Ministry informs.
“The fallout of the “exposé” put forward by historian Ioan Aurel Pop at an event held last week at the Babes-Bolyai University of Science in Cluj (Kolozsvár), which marked the debut of the “Laboratory for the Analysis of Information Warfare and Strategic Communications” recently set up by the Romanian Academy, mainly to deal with Russia, continued to gain momentum in the Romanian press on Tuesday. In his lecture, the Rector of the University claimed that Romania “is also involved in an information and communication war with another one of its neighbours, Hungary”, and that Budapest has “set up a state department paid for out of its own budget called Trianon 100”, while the Romania Centenary department set up by the administration in Bucharest has no separate budget,” MTI reports.
In reply to questions from MTI, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade issued a statement on Tuesday stating that Hungary continued to hope that bilateral relations with Romania’s new government can gain new impetus, as previously discussed by the countries’ two foreign ministers at a meeting in February.
The Hungarian Academy of Sciences’ Impetus programme is an open scientific project aimed at achieving greater and better knowledge of the past, the statement reads. The Ministry said it was “unfortunate that the interests of certain Romanian academic circles are in conflict with the joint uncovering of the often differently interpreted processes of the past”. “An academic work of this nature can only bring the two peoples closer”, the Ministry stressed.
The (Hungarian Foreign) Ministry will continue to support the joint investigation of the past and the related scientific discussion in future, and will use the instruments at its disposal to facilitate dialogue between Hungarian and Romanian researchers, the statement stressed.
Romanian Academician said…
Last week, the Romanian Academy announced that the Budapest government has set up a special department called Trianon 100, which started to counter the actions planned by Romania in 2018 to celebrate 100 years since the Great Union.
Ioan Aurel Pop, Rector of the Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, said that the Hungarian research team Trianon 100 received 30 million forints (EUR 96,000) from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences for a five-year project aimed at “completing, synthesizing and promoting the knowledge about the Trianon Peace Treaty after the World War I.”
Pop claimed the propaganda is made in international languages and in Hungarian, not in Romanian, announcing the steps ahead.
“The Anglophone and Hispanic public opinion will find that the history of Romanians is recent history, that the Romanians are among the peoples without history, that the term Walachian is not synonymous with Romanian – an idea also present in Serbia, that Transylvania is not Romania – because it has been part of Romania for less than 100 years and has more historical ties with Hungary than with Romania, that the Hungarians are the ones who civilized the Carpathian basin. Iancu de Hunedoara (ruler of Transylvania – our note) allegedly was called Ioan of Hunedoara because his name was actually Janos, and the Transylvanians did not want to get the Great Union and this was done over their heads,” Academician Ioan Aurel Pop said.