1-4 lessons a week. At best their petition was registered, but in most cases it was ignored. Seeing the possibility of organizing Hungarian courses outside school, they gave up the humiliating process of writing requests without results. The MCSMSZ maintains its standpoint according to which the community should claim their legal rights, but the population is not so determined. Leaders of the school inspectorate in Bacău County, as well as the authorities and church, declared at a meeting that they were opposed to the official instruction of Hungarian in Csángó villages. In their opinion the Csángós are of Romanian origin, and sporadic requests for teaching Hungarian at schools reflect not a real parental demand, but Hungarian nationalist ambitions. In the village of Arini (Magyarfalu in Hungarian) the village mayor and the Romanian-only teachers of the state school, filed a complaint with the local police about the "unlawful teaching activities" of Gergely Csoma. Csoma teaches Hungarian as an extracurricular activity to the children of Arini. Following the complaint, the local police started what Csángó activists have described as an intimidation campaign among the mothers of those children who are studying their maternal language with the said teacher. In 2008 members of the European Parliament sent a petition to the European Commission regarding the obstruction of Hungarian language education and the alleged intimidation of Csángó-Hungarian pupils in Valea Mare (Nagypatak). The leader of the High Commission on Minority Affairs responded to the petition of László Tőkés MEP in a written notice that they would warn Romania to secure education in the mother tongue for the Csángós of Moldavia. Romanian sources According to the final report of the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania in 2006, the policy of assimilation of the communist regime had serious consequences on the situation of the Csángós in Moldavia. The report noted that the first attempts at forced assimilation of the Csángós date back to the interwar period, with the Catholic Church taking on an important role in this process. Facilitating the loss of the linguistic identity of the Csángós allowed the Catholic Church to stop their assimilation into the Orthodox Church, and as a result of these policies, the Csángós did not benefit from religious services and education in their mother tongue. Population It is difficult to estimate the exact number of the Csángós because of the elusive nature and multiple