Berlin, Germany - With Romania looking likely to be admitted to the European Union in January, leaders of the country's churches are pressing Brussels to do more to help them get back church property that was confiscated during 50 years of Communist rule.
"We will ask the European Commission to try and persuade the Romanian government to give the churches back their property," said Zsolt Szilagyi, a leading representative of the churches.
"Since the criteria for joining the EU is respect of private property, we want the commission to seriously consider our case," added Szilagyi, a political science professor at Oradea University in Transylvania, northern Romania.
The issue has taken on urgency among the churches as Romania's accession to the EU nears. Olli Rehn, the EU's enlargement commissioner, told members of the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee on Monday night that the country had made progress both in the fight against corruption and in reforming its judiciary.
Church leaders fear that once Romania joins the EU, pressure on the government to return church property - including schools, monasteries, hospitals, orphanages, agricultural land and forests - will disappear.
The property was confiscated after 1948 from all religious denominations except the Orthodox Church, which held a privileged position under the communists.
In a letter sent last October to José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, bishops and senior leaders of Romania's Lutheran, Unitarian, Roman Catholic and Greek Catholic churches complained that the authorities had "failed to restore confiscated church property," which they said was necessary for religious, charitable, educational and social activities.
Krisztina Nagy, Rehn's spokeswoman, said: "Legally speaking, the European Commission does not have competence in the area of property rights." Elmar Brok, chairman of the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee, who attended the meeting with Rehn, said "such competence rests with the member states."
Brok, a leading member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union party in Germany, said the churches in Romania might have a case under EU law if they could prove they were being discriminated against because of their ethnic background. Several of the churches were established by Germans or Hungarians living in Transylvania, a border region.
In its annual reports on Romania's progress toward meeting the conditions for joining the EU, the commission has repeatedly criticized foot-dragging by the courts and the bureaucracy in returning such property.
Romania's justice minister, Monica Macovei, has tried to speed up the process. But, said Szilagyi, too often the local authorities prevent restitution. "Some people make money from renting the property," he said.
Other members of the foreign affairs committee said the main priorities were fighting corruption and improving the functioning of the judiciary in Romania. "We heard about the church restitution issue," said Joost Lagendijk, a Dutch member of the European Greens. "It is important. But it seems it is a minor issue compared to the fight against corruption."