1st of DecemberNational Day of Romania

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The national holiday of Romania, the Great Union Day (also called Unification Day) occurring on December 1, commemorates this event. The holiday was set after the 1989 Romanian Revolution, and marks the unification not only of Transylvania, but also of the provinces of Banat, Basarabia and Bukovina with the Romanian Kingdom, in 1918, the Union of Transylvania with Romania being the last event, sealing the unification of the country.

On December 1, 1918 (November 18 Old Style), the National Assembly of Romanians of Transylvania and Hungary, consisting of 1,228 elected representatives of the Romanians in Transylvania, Banat, Crişana and Maramureş, convened in Alba Iulia and decreed (by unanimous vote):“… the unification of those Romanians and of all the territories inhabited by them with Romania.” The Resolution voted by the National Assembly stipulated also the "fundamental principles for the foundation of the new Romanian State":

The Resolution voted by the National Assembly stipulated also the "fundamental principles for the foundation of the new Romanian State":

Full national freedom for all the co-inhabiting peoples. Each people will study, manage and judge in its own language by individual of its own stock and each people will get the right to be represented in the law bodies and to govern the country in accordance with the number of its people.

Equal rights and full autonomous religious freedom for all the religions in the State.

Full democratic system in all the realms of public life. Suffrage universal, direct, equal, secret, in each commune, proportionally, for both sexes, 21 years old at the representation in communes, counties or parliament.

Full freedom of the press, association and meeting, free propaganda of all human thoughts.

Radical agrarian reform. All the assets, above all the big ones, will be inscribed. The wills by which the heir consigns the land to a third party will be abolished; meanwhile, on the basis of the right to cut down estates freely, the peasant will be able to his own property (ploughing land, pasture, forest), at least one for him and his family to labour on. The guiding principle of this agrarian policy is promoting social evening, on the one hand, and giving force to production, on the other.

The industrial workers will be granted the same rights and privileges that are in force in the most advanced western industrial states.

The union was conditional, and demanded the preservation of a democratic local autonomy, the equality of all nationalities and religions.

The Resolution of the National Assembly

The Assembly also formed from 200 of its members, plus 50 co-opted members a High National Romanian Council of Transylvania, the new permanent parliament of Transylvania.

The next day, on December 2, 1918 the High National Romanian Council of Transylvania formed a government under the name of Directory Council of Transylvania (Consiliul Dirigent al Transilvaniei), headed by Iuliu Maniu.

On December 11, 1918, King Ferdinand signed the Law regarding the Union of Transylvania, Banat, Crişana, the Satmar and Maramureş with the Old Kingdom of Romania, decreeing that

“The lands named in the resolution of the Alba-Iulia National Assembly of the 18th of November 1918 are and remain forever united with the Kingdom of Romania.”

Administrative map of Greater Romania in 1930

The Greater Romania (Romanian: România Mare) generally refers to the territory of Romania in the years between the First World War and the Second World War (WWI and WWII), the largest geographical extent of Romania up to that time and its largest peacetime extent ever (295,649 km²); more precisely, it refers to the territory of the Kingdom of Romania between 1919 and 1940. In 1918, at the end of World War I, Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia united with the Romanian Old Kingdom.

The name and its meaningsThe original Romanian term, "România Mare", or Great

Romania, did not carry the possibly expansionist or irredentist sense of its English translation; it is rather used in the sense of re-integration of the territories that share an alleged Romanian language and culture. The term became more common after the Treaty of Versailles, when the re-attachment of Transylvania to the Kingdom of Romania occurred as a result of the Treaty of Trianon; thus the Kingdom of Romania under King Ferdinand I came to include all provinces with a large ethnic Romanian majority, by comparison with the previous Romanian Old Kingdom under King Carol I, which did not include the provinces of Transylvania and Bessarabia, but included most of Bukovina. An alternative name for "România Mare", coined at the same time, was in the Romanian language "România Întregită" (roughly translated in English as, "Integrated Romania", or "Entire Romania"). "România Mare" was seen (and is also now seen by the great majority of the Romanian people, both at home and abroad) as the 'true', whole Romanian state, or, as Tom Gallagher states, the "Holy Grail of Romanian nationalism".

When used in a political context it has an irredentist connotation, mainly concerning the territories that were ruled by Romania in the interwar, that are now either part of Ukraine or the Republic of Moldova. During the Soviet occupation, due to Stalinist persecution, large numbers (over half a million) of Romanians in Bessarabia and Bukovina were displaced or perished in executions, the Gulag, and famine, while during the entire Soviet period a large number of Russophones where invited to cement Soviet hold on the territories.

Location of Romania (green)

– on the European continent  (light green & grey)– in the European Union  (light green) 

Capital : (and largest city) Bucharest (Bucureşti)

Official languages: RomanianEthnic groups:  89.5% Romanians, 6.6% Hungarians,

2.5% Roma, 1.4% other minority groups Romanian Government Unitary semi-

presidential republic  Legislature Parliament   -  Upper House Senate  -  Lower House Chamber of Deputies Formation   -  Transylvania 10th century   -  Wallachia 1290    -  Moldavia 1346   

First Unification 1600   Reunification of Wallachia and Moldavia January 24,

1859  Officially recognised independence from the

Ottoman Empire July 13, 1878   Unification with Transylvania December 1, 1918  EU accession January 1, 2007 Area  -  Total 238,391 km2 (82nd) 92,043 sq mi    -  Water (%) 3 Population  -  1 January 2009 estimate

21,498,616 (52nd)   -  2002 census 21,680,974   Density 90/km2 (104th)

233/sq mi

National GuardNational Guard

Military ParadeMilitary Parade

National Guard ParadeNational Guard Parade

National GuardNational Guard

National Heroes MonumentNational Heroes Monument

Students Paying Their Respects Students Paying Their Respects

Unknown Soldier’s Tomb - Religious ServiceUnknown Soldier’s Tomb - Religious Service

War VeteransWar Veterans

Happy Anniversary, ROMANIA!