#Among #Hungarians #Transylvania #antiimmigration #antiWestern #sentiment #higher #average #Romania #News #sources
Hungarians from Transylvania they are more anti-migration and anti-Western than the Romanian average, but at the same time their trust in institutions has also decreased, the Cluj news portal reported on Tuesday You’re masturbatingpresenting the results of a recent study, carried out by the Bálványos Institute.
Tibor Toró, lecturer at the Sapientia University of Cluj-Napoca, research director of the Bálványos Institute, and Tamás Kiss, researcher of the National Research Institute for Minorities, co-owner of the Transylvania Inquiry Institute, held a press conference about the research that examines and compares the points of view of Transylvanian Hungarians and Romanians regarding the Russo-Ukrainian war, their relationship with refugees and migrants, their intention to participate in elections, their political preferences and their trust in institutions.
The two researchers stated that they performed a survey of telephone opinion, between February and March 2024, among the Hungarian population, and a month later among the Romanians, and the results were compared with the research conducted in 2022 and 2020.
The researchers drew attention to the fact that welfare chauvinism in Romania is a new phenomenon, which appeared in connection with Ukrainian refugees, and the attitude towards refugees changed a lot in 2024 compared to 2022.
What the study showed
“Research shows that Transylvanian Hungarians have always shown a more exclusive and withdrawn attitude towards refugees, but their opinion does not differ so much from the point of view of Romanians. What can be observed is that racism is not present among Romanians , they don’t differentiate between nations, everyone is judged by the same standard, whereas in the case of Transylvanian Hungarians, there is a clear difference between white-skinned refugees of European origin and non-European, non-white refugees,” he explained Tamás Kiss.
According to one of the graphs attached to the Maszol portal report, the rejection of migrants among Transylvanian Hungarians has increased from 54 percent to 57 percent since 2020, while in Romanian society as a whole, the percentage of those who would not accept a migrant as a neighbor has decreased from 33 to 19 percent. According to the survey, rejection of Roma among Transylvanian Hungarians increased somewhat to 54 percent, while in Romanian society as a whole it decreased from 48 to 26 percent.
The highest degree of rejection, which increased from 45 to 71 percent, was found in the perception of Muslims among Transylvanian Hungarians, while the 33 percent rejection measured four years ago remained unchanged throughout Romanian society .
Declines in confidence on the line
Regarding trust in institutions, Tibor Toró pointed out that the trust of Hungarians in Transylvania has decreased in almost all institutions, except for local public administrations. Among Hungarians, trust in the EU shows a decreasing trend from year to year, while there is stagnation in the case of Romanians.
According to one of the graphs presented by the Bálványos Institute, while Romanian society as a whole trusts the armed forces (59 percent), NATO (56 percent) and the EU (49 percent), only 21 percent of Transylvanian Hungarians trust in the army, 33% in NATO and 26% in the EU.
The situation reverses only in the case of local public administrations, which enjoy the trust of 70 percent of Transylvanian Hungarians, compared to an average of 27 percent in Romania. There is, however, no difference regarding the Parliament, which is in last place both in terms of the trust of Hungarians and Romanians, with a trust index of 13%.
The researchers also measured the desire and availability of Hungarians from Transylvania to go to the polls, and the research showed that the desire of Hungarians to vote is greater than that of Romanians, which can be attributed to the fact that UDMR launched in a intense campaign since the fall of last year.
Regarding the perception of the Russian-Ukrainian war: while two years ago 74 percent of the population of Romania and 46 percent of Hungarians in Transylvania declared that Russia was the aggressor, in 2024 this figure dropped to 46 percent at the level of the entire society, and at 19 percent among Transylvanian Hungarians.
Instead, the percentage of those who believe that the war was caused by Western countries and Ukraine by the fact that “Ukraine got too close to NATO” increased, from 16 to 21 percent nationally and from 44 to 49 percent in among Transylvanian Hungarians.
