Last week, just before midnight on Sunday, an important piece of news spread quickly around the world: The hard-right candidate George Simion has been defeated, democracy in Romania is safe, and the liberal, pro-European mayor of Bucharest, Nicusor Dan, will be the next president of Romania.

Another-important piece of news followed, which came as a surprise to many Romanian observers but was not as widely reported internationally: Romania's ethnic Hungarians and Moldovan citizens who also hold Romanian passports voted in record numbers for Nicusor Dan, making a decisive contribution to his victory.

Conservative estimates say that over 500,000 — perhaps even over 700,000 — of these voters voted for Dan, which would account for a large proportion of his 830,000-vote lead over his opponent.

In short, without the votes of these two groups, Dan could have lost the election.

Ethnic Hungarians in Romania? Moldovans with dual citizenship? For those who do not know Romania well, this might sound like a niche issue to be discussed by election buffs.

This probably explains why it received little international attention on the evening of the election.

The fact is, however, that both groups play an important role not only in domestic politics in Romania, but also, by extension, in Europe.

Hungarians have been a national minority in Romania since the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I, when Transylvania and other regions became part of Romania.

There are currently around one million ethnic Hungarians in Romania, which accounts for about 5.5% of the total population. Most of these ethnic Hungarian........

© Deutsche Welle