It Is Not Only About Who Comes – It Is Also About Who Leaves

On Mar 24, 2026

In recent years, the word “migration” has mostly been presented as an external threat: refugees, border crossings, the problems of big cities. Much less is said about what migration means in everyday life in Harghita County: that our own people are leaving.

Now, following my proposal, a new specific article has been included in the European Union’s opinion on migration. This new text states that outmigration, depopulation, and the loss of young people are also migration challenges, and that the EU must give them specific attention and support.

What does this mean in everyday life in Harghita County?

In our region, migration does not appear in the form of “people being resettled here.” It looks much more like this:

a young doctor moves to Germany, and our communities are left without a family doctor for months;
a skilled worker — a mason, electrician, or carpenter — works in Austria, while back home there is no one to repair the roof;
parents say, “the child will have a future abroad,” and fewer and fewer children remain in local schools;
older people stay at home, while their children earn a living abroad, and there is no one to help them on a daily basis.

This is migration too — only not in the form of people coming here, but of people leaving from here. In this way, the community loses knowledge, labour, and the next generation.

What is new in this new article?

The new adopted article essentially states three things:

The EU’s new migration fund must not deal only with reception and border protection, but also with those regions where outmigration and depopulation are severe.
In these regions — such as Harghita County — specific EU support must be planned for strengthening communities and helping young people remain in their homeland.
Decision-makers must explicitly take into account the particular situation of rural, mountainous, and minority regions when distributing funds.

This new article is what we have long been missing: it names our problem clearly and obliges the EU to deal with it.

What have we managed to achieve overall?

Alongside this new article, my other amendments were also adopted, and together they send a clear message:

migration does not look the same everywhere — it takes one form at a sea border, and another in a mountain village;
brain drain and the loss of skilled hands — when both our knowledge and our workforce leave — are just as much migration issues as any refugee crisis;
small local governments and minority regions do not have the same capacities to cope with these challenges, yet they are often expected to do the same.

From now on, this is no longer just a local complaint, but text officially adopted by the European Union. That is the difference.

Why is this important for the people of Harghita County?

Because now:

when we ask for funding for job creation, vocational training, youth programmes, healthcare, or educational development, we can say:
“these projects respond to outmigration — to a form of migration that the EU now officially recognises”;
when resources are distributed in Brussels or Bucharest, it can no longer be said that “this is only a problem of the southern border” — it is now clearly stated that our regions are also part of the migration challenge;
when we speak at home about the future, we can say:
“the debate is not only about who should be allowed in, but also about how we can ensure that our children have a reason to stay.”

In summary

For the first time in the European debate on migration, a separate article has been included that speaks about regions like ours — areas marked by outmigration, depopulation, mountainous geography, and minority communities.
This is the novelty: it is not only about those who arrive, but also about those who leave.
This strengthens our hand when we ask for support for concrete development projects that help people stay.

The task now is to use this new text in every funding application, every negotiation, and every local plan in the interest of the people of Harghita County.

Brussels, 24 March 2026