[Source: FUEN now Actuel / UFCE Actuel / FUEV Aktuell]

December 1, 19977

On 18 February 1994 a Treaty of friendship and cooperation was signed at Bucharest, between the governments of Romania and the Republic of Croatia, providing for the assistance, by the respective States, of the minority groups living in both countries.

To date, this treaty, which was ratified by the Romanian parliament in September 1994, has remained unenforced, with regard to the Romanians of Croatia, who are not legally recognized as a minority ethnic and linguistic group in Croatia and have no cultural institutions, Church or schools in their own language.

The Istro-Romanians language school ceased to exist in 1925 following the death of the great teacher Andrei Glavina, and the two young Romanians sent by their community to study as teachers in Romania, in 1935, never returned to their country, prevented from doing so first by the war and then by the Communist regime established in Yugoslavia.

The administrative autonomy of the Istro-Romanians - embodied in the Istro-Romanian municipality of Valdarsa - was abolished in 1943, following the coming to power of Tito and the Communists, who refused the community any rights. The process of rapid disappearance of the ethnic minority due to assimilation by the Croatian population is ongoing and occurring at an even faster rate than in the past, since compulsory school attendance and the invasiveness of the Croatian-language mass media has made the survival of an ethnic minority with no schools or mass media in its own language a virtually impossible feat.

Thus, we are appealing to the Federal Union of European Nationalities (FUEN) - whose task it is to protect small minorities unprotected by any laws - to request the application of the international and national laws on the protection of minorities and small ethnic groups, also in favor of the Istro-Romanians.

In this respect, we wish to expressly quote the documents by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the European Charter of Regional and Minority Languages of 5th November 1992, the Framework Convention for Minorities in Europe of 1995 and the bilingual agreements and treaties, such as the above mentioned Romanian-Croatian Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation of 18th February 1994 and the Agreement on Cooperation in the fields of education, culture and science between the Government of Romania and the Government of the Republic Croatia, signed on 19th May 1993 (articles 2 &d, 4 and 15).

All the above mentioned treaties and agreements provide for school teaching in the language of the minority and have been punctually applied in Romania in favor of the Croatian minority (about 3.000 persons), while they remain unenforced for the Romanian minorities in Istria (about 1.000 persons who declared themselves Romanian communities in the Mura and Drava Valleys, who are legally gathered into a national association since 1995, with headquarters at Pribislavec. Therefore, we appeal to the FUEN so that, in accordance with art. 3 of its charter, it mazy contact the Croatian and Romanian governments to request the application of the laws and bilateral agreements in favor of the minorities, amongst which the Romanian minority in Croatia, and so that it may raise the issue before the international organizations such as the Council of Europe, the Council of Europe’s ad hoc Committee for the Protection of National Minorities, the Council of Europe’s Committee for Culture and Education, the Office of the OSCE High Commissioner for national Minorities at the Hague, the European Parliament’s Committee for Juridical Affairs and the Rights of Citizens and all the other organizations dealing with the protection of minorities.