Tőkés addresses EP conference marking Timisoara revolution anniversary

László Tőkés, an ethnic Hungarian MEP of Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party, addressed a European parliamentary conference marking the 30th anniversary of Romania’s democratic revolution, on Tuesday. 

Tőkés, a pastor targeted by the Ceausescu regime whose acts of defiance sparked the revolution which led to the end of the communist era in Romania, said the Timisoara (Temesvár) revolution “opened Romania’s gates to a free, democratic and unified Europe”. 

“[But] the current, critical state of our country cannot be remedied without justice and atonement,” he added. More needs to be done “to successfully complete the [political] regime change…”

“Looking at Romania and the European Union, we are right to sense a lack of appreciation by transition countries and the EU of their shared past…” he said.

Romania is now “basking in the international limelight” but “it is still under communist rule” from which “all kinds of misery arise”, Tokes insisted. Further fundamental changes should embrace minority policy with a view to creating “a future in central and eastern Europe in which lives can be led amid humane conditions,” he added. 

Kinga Gál, another Fidesz MEP, said in her address: “Nothing has changed in recent decades in Romania, where Hungarians are still treated as second-class citizens”. Commemorating the developments of 1989 “teach us vigilance, remembrance, and to promote the heritage of Transylvanian Hungarians, which has become the symbol of never-ending hope,” she said.