The Differences Between the Hungarian and Roma Minorities' Situation in the Contemporary Romania

This bachelor thesis focuses on the status differences between the Hungarian and Roma minorities after an accession to the EU in 2007. It examines how the approaches of Romanian government and the European Union differ toward the minorities and it characterises major challenges of the minorities in four different aspects - education, employment, housing conditions and political representation. Romani people started getting more attention from the Bucharest government when the country decided to join the European integration process. The EU was monitoring the situation of the Roma community regularly and decided to publish a framework strategy for Roma inclusion in 2011 which served as an example for member countries. Romanian government elaborated its own strategy within a year and updated it in 2014. This document provides a list of instructions to all Romanian institutions how to tackle the problems Romani community faces such as discrimination in hiring process, school segregation, bad housing conditions or poor representation in politics. The Hungarian minority has considerably better position in Romania than Roma people. Compared to other minorities this community is represented by solid number of politicians and Hungarian party UDMR has been part of the Romanian parliament since the election..