Decree of King Ferdinand

The British chronology of the war records under 27 December 1918 that the King of Romania issued a proclamation on the annexation of the Romanian provinces of Austria-Hungary. This refers to decree-law no. 3631, which King Ferdinand I signed on 24 December (11 December by the Julian calendar, which Romania still used at the time). The decree appeared in the official gazette, Monitorul Oficial, on 26 December (13 December Old Style). It confirmed the resolution of the assembly at Alba Iulia, which on 1 December had proclaimed the union of Transylvania, the Banat and the other lands inhabited by Romanians in Hungary with the Kingdom of Romania.

In its solemn preamble the decree recalled that Romania now stood beside its allies among the victors, that Bessarabia and Bukovina had united with the motherland, and that the Romanians from beyond the Carpathians had proclaimed at Alba Iulia their unconditional and everlasting union with the kingdom. Its single article declared: “The lands covered by the resolution of the National Assembly at Alba Iulia of 18 November 1918 are and shall remain for ever united with the Kingdom of Romania.” The decree was issued after talks with a delegation of the Directing Council, which in mid-December had brought the Alba Iulia resolution to the King in Bucharest. Its members included the publicist Vasile Goldiș, the physician and politician Alexandru Vaida-Voevod and two bishops, the Orthodox Miron Cristea and the Greek Catholic Iuliu Hossu.

The same day the King signed a second decree, no. 3632, on the provisional organisation of Transylvania. Until the united state was finally organised, the administration of the province was to be run by the Directing Council headed by Iuliu Maniu, which sat in Sibiu. The government in Bucharest reserved to itself foreign affairs, the army, railways, posts, telegraphs and telephones, the currency, customs, state loans and state security. Transylvania was to be represented in the central government by ministers without portfolio. These were Vaida-Voevod, Goldiș and Ștefan Cicio Pop, who joined the Liberal cabinet of Ion I. C. Brătianu, formed in mid-December after the resignation of General Coandă.

On 24 December, the day the decree was signed, the Romanian army entered Kolozsvár (Cluj), the most important city of Transylvania. The Hungarian government of Mihály Károlyi did not recognise the Alba Iulia resolutions. It invoked the Belgrade Convention, which had left it the administration of a large part of these lands, and protested against the Romanian moves. Two days earlier the Transylvanian Hungarians, at a great rally in Kolozsvár, had affirmed their loyalty to Hungary.

A few days later, on 31 December (18 December Old Style), Ferdinand signed a similar decree on the union of Bukovina with Romania, countersigned by Brătianu. A further decree appointed two Bukovinian leaders, Iancu Flondor and the historian Ion Nistor, to the government as ministers without portfolio. The King had already confirmed the union of Bessarabia by decree in April, and in December its Sfatul Țării renounced the conditions it had set at that time. The December 1918 decrees were internal Romanian acts. The parliament of Greater Romania passed laws ratifying all three unions on 29 December 1919, and international recognition of the frontiers came with the peace treaties with Austria at Saint-Germain and with Hungary at Trianon.