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Friday 19th of April 2024, 03:02 CET |
| Romanian passports popular in Ukraine |
November 7, 2002
Kyiv Post
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Written by Peter Byrne
Posted by HW on April 18, 2024
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Thousands of Ukrainians are applying for Romanian citizenship in an effort to gain better travel opportunities once Romania joins the European Union.
The interest in obtaining Romanian citizenship has rekindled fears that Romania is promoting its citizenship among Ukrainians to increase its influence over an area it once controlled.
Free travel
Advertisements appeared recently in local newspapers in southwestern Chernivtsi Oblast inviting local residents to apply for Romanian citizenship. The advertisements claimed Romanian passport holders will soon have a chance to travel freely throughout Europe once Romania joins the EU.
Romania is slated to join the EU in 2007, while officials in Brussels say Ukraine will not be able to do so for at least another 10 years. In the meantime, Ukrainian citizens will need visas to enter most European countries.
The advertisements, which contained telephone numbers and addresses of offices processing applications, encouraged Ukrainians to apply if they could prove that their ancestors lived in the region prior to 1940.
Bukovyna 1918-1940
Romania controlled Bukovyna, a region encompassing Chernivtsi oblast, from 1918 to 1940, when the area was transferred to the Soviet Union. Romania made territorial claims to Northern Bukovyna after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, but Ukraine resisted the move. Romania and Ukraine eventually signed a bilateral treaty confirming the existing border in 1997.
Consular offices
Now, Romania has consular offices in Kyiv, Chernivtsi and Odessa.
Officials at the Romanian Embassy weren’t able to say how many Ukrainian citizens have acquired Romanian citizenship recently.
Ethnic Romanians
Petro Kobevko, editor-in-chief of the Chernivtsi-based weekly newspaper Chas, estimated that more than 20,000 of the oblast’s 940,000 inhabitants have already applied for and received Romanian passports.
According to the 1989 Soviet census, about 135,000 ethnic Romanians and 325,000 ethnic Moldovans lived in Ukraine, an amount equal to about 1 percent of Ukraine’s population.
Ethnic Romanians make up the majority of the population in some districts of Chernivtsi Oblast, and more than 30 percent of television programming in the oblast is broadcast in Romanian.
“Most people in these parts can prove, if they want to, that their ancestors resided in Bukovyna before 1940,” said Volodymyr Mrachkovsky, head of Chernivtsi’s passport registration and migration office.
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He said many residents in the economically depressed region believe that Romanian passports will give them more freedom to travel and work abroad.
Ukrainian right wing
Romania’s campaign has drawn the ire of rightist Ukrainian political parties, who accuse the neighboring country of brutal interference in Ukraine’s internal affairs. A statement issued by the Sobor party and the Stepan Bandera Tryzub nationalist organization on Oct. 24 charged that Romania was using simplified procedures for granting citizenship to residents of Chernivtsi Oblast. It said that by promoting the practice in the local media, Romanian officials were sparking separatist trends in the region and threatening Ukraine’s territorial integrity. The parties called on the Ukrainian government to respond to what they described as Romania’s “provocative actions.”
No double nationality
In an Oct. 30 address on local television, Chernivtsi Oblast Governor Teofil Bauer warned Ukrainians applying for Romanian passports that they will lose their Ukrainian citizenship upon acquiring citizenship of another country. Ukrainian law does not recognize dual citizenship.
Bauer said that local authorities would take “adequate measures” to punish persons who had failed to inform authorities that they had accepted Romanian citizenship.
"The Romanian law is for everybody"
Dan-Marin Cruceru, consul at the Romanian Embassy in Kyiv, said that embassy officials in Ukraine were adhering to Romanian law.
“For us, it is not important who asks for citizenship,” said Cruceru. “The [Romanian] law is for everybody.”
He said Romanian law grants citizenship to former Romanian citizens who have been deprived of their citizenship for various reasons. He said those also include citizens of other countries who do not intend to move to Romania for permanent residence.
He said that more than 300,000 Moldovans, including more than half of Moldova’s lawmakers, hold Romanian passports.
He couldn’t specify how many Ukrainians have Romanian citizenship. He also denied allegations his embassy was using simplified procedures to grant Romanian passports to Ukrainians living in Chernivtsi Oblast.
“The Ukrainian authorities think that we permit too many Ukrainians to receive Romanian citizenship,” Cruceru said. “This perception is false.” |
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