Issues on the Ownership Rights of the Former Hungarian Optants in Historical and Legislative Contemporaneousness
Issues on the Ownership Rights of the Former Hungarian Optants in Historical and Legislative Contemporaneousness

Summary/Abstract: From the legal perspective, the author brings again into discussion the Romanian - Hungarian contentious with respect to the large properties mainly landowning in Transylvania from the eve of and after the Great Unification of December 1, 1918. At that time there were great quarrels and disputes caused by the strongly exaggerated claims made with assertiveness against the young Romanian State by the category of landlords so-called "Hungarian optants" [Note: the Hungarian optants were a category of Hungarian landlords who, after the Great Unification of December 1, 1918, when the nationalization began, were given the option to choose to return to Hungary and to be compensated for the properties they possessed on the territory of Transylvania], who were grouped in formations by families and nobility titles, and possessed large land properties, like a reminiscence of the feudal practices brought to the first quarter of the Twentieth century by interests of the dualist regime. After signing the Treaty of Trianon on June 4, 1920, these bitter enemies of the young Romanian State have "opted" for another nationality and made desperate efforts to maintain their privileges in Transylvania in respect to their properties, making all due endeavors before the justice courts and international organizations of that time. The Romanian State defended by a group of lawyers coordinated by the diplomat Nicolae Titulescu prevailed. Yet the contentious did not fade away, being brought up again into contemporaneousness by the descendants of the "Hungarian optants", therefore the Romanian State, due to the legislation passed after 1990, is in a position to continue to retrocede/to pay damages, as the case may be, in what should be considered a closed chapter. The author makes a very pertinent analysis of this precise issue with obvious legal consequences to and with a negative economic impact on the Romanian State caused by the fact that, due to the unconsciousness of the justice and authorities, we return to ordinances and retrograde property ownership models as they were in the Nineteenth century. Keywords: legal; law; laws; return/refund; Hungarian optants; peace treaty; (land) owner; (land) owners; privileges; land reform; expropriation; appropriation of land.

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