Roumanian Government’s Repeated Promises to Regulate Citizenship Question Not Been Kept Deputy Landa

Why has the Government still not brought in the Bill for the regulation of the question of Nationality in Roumania, which it promised again in the message from the Throne delivered by the King at the last opening of Parliament, Deputy Landau asked on behalf of the Club of Jewish Deputies, in an interpellation which he presented to-day in the Chamber.

The are tens of thousands of Jewish families in Roumania, he said, who are looking forward with anxiety to this law to give them the rights of citizenship. If the matter is not settled by April, he suggested, thousands of them will find themselves having to do four years’ military service. He urged the Minister of Justice to him from the Government side.

THE ROUMANIAN NATIONALITY LAW

The present Roumanian Nationality Law, which was enacted in February 1924, has ever since its enactment been the subject of strong complaint by the Jewish population of Roumania and by the various Jewish organisations, like the Joint Foreign Committee, the Committee of Jewish Delegations, now the Council for the Protection of Jewish Minority Rights, the American Jewish Committee, and the American Jewish Congress, which regard it as a direct infraction of the Roumanian Minorities Treaty. Negotiations on this subject have been conducted with the various Roumanian Governments by the Joint Foreign Committee since June 1924, and Mr. Lucien Wolf stated in one of his reports that although the previous Roumanian Governments contested the Jewish view of the illegality of the Nationality Law, they made many definite promises that it should at least be so applied as not to deprive anyone of his national rights. These promises, however, were not fulfilled. He estimated that in the Bukovina alone the number of Jews who have been deprived of all national rights through the operation of the Nationality Law is fourteen thousand, while in Transylvania and Bessarabia a large additional number are in the same situation. These are supplemented by many christian inhabitants who are suffering in a like manner.

At one time, the Joint Foreign Committee invited the Roumanian Government to take the initiative in submitting the Law to the Permanent Court of International Justice, in order to obtain from that body an avis consultant as to the concordance of that Law with the Treaty obligations of the Roumanian State. M. Duca, the Foreign insister then, however, expressed his desire for a direct settlement without the intervention of the League of Nations or the Permanent Court of International Justice. Mr. Wolf told the Board of Deputies that it was true that the Law is a violation of the minority Treaty, but it was adopted on the assumption that there exists a conflict between the Treaty of St. Germain and the National minorities Treaty of Versailles, and legal proceedings in this direction would be a difficult and lengthy process and might lead to no results.

The Joint Foreign Committee pointed out at the same time that the view of the Roumanian Government on the Nationality question affected the whole group of Treaties to which the Roumnian Minorities Treaty belongs, and which constitute a Charter of Liberty for many millions of otherwise helpless persons throughout Central and Eastern Europe. The act of the Roumanian Government, it said, is calculated … create a precedent which might easily render all these Treaties null and void.

The question also engaged the attention of the Committee of Jewish Delegations, which, in one of its reports, stated that about 15 per cent. to 18 per cent. of the Jewish population of the province of Bukovina, between 15,000 and 18,000 people, were deprived of citizenship rights by the Law. The Committee, it said, had prepared the necessary materials and was taking action regarding it, both on its own account and throught the American Jewish Congress.

Deputy Landau and other Jewish Deputies have constantly raised the question in Parliament. In January 1929. M. Junian, the Minister of Justice, promised Deputy Landau, in the Chamber, that he was about to introduce a Bill which would satisfactorily regulate the Nationality question. M. Junian resigned from the Cabinet after a time. His successor, M. Nitzescu, repested the assurance, promising that he would introduce the Bill at the beginning of the Autumn session. meanwhile King Carol returned to Roumania, and N. Junian again became Minister of Justice, and when the King reopened the new session of rationality Law was included in the Speach from the Trone, as a special assurance to the Club of Jewish Deputies, it was stated.