Magyar Party (Romania)

National Magyar Party
Partidul Naţional Maghiar
Országos Magyar Párt
LeadersSámuel Jósika (1922–1923)
István Ugron (1923–1926)
György Bethlen (1926–1938)
Founded28 December 1922
Dissolved30 March 1938
IdeologyHungarian minority interests
Transylvanian regionalism
Political positionCentre

The Magyar Party (Hungarian: Országos Magyar Párt; Romanian: Partidul Maghiar, PM, officially Partidul Naţional Maghiar) was a political party in post-World War I Romania.

The party had a heterogeneous structure, including bourgeois and landowners, peasants, workers, intellectuals and city-dwellers. It had powerful organisations in counties with a Hungarian majority, among whom it had a substantial electoral influence.

The party wished to obtain complete autonomy for the areas inhabited by a majority of Hungarians and Székelys;[citation needed] it foresaw Hungarians handling administration and all social-cultural problems, but asked that Hungarian-language confessional schools be funded by the Romanian state at all levels. Its tactical line underwent a certain oscillation. In the years right after 1918, several Magyar political formations appeared, some calling for integration into the just-unified Romanian state, others not recognising the new realities settled through the Alba Iulia Resolution. After the June 1920 signing of the Treaty of Trianon, the Magyar Party, which declared itself the representative of all Hungarians in Romania, came to be established. After Hitler came to power in Germany and Miklós Horthy's régime sharpened its revisionist rhetoric, the party leadership more often than not took anti-Romanian stances, following the Budapest government's line.