January 13, 2023

Minority SafePack: the Citizens’ Committee is set to appeal the General Court’s decision

UPDATED: After a thorough analysis of the decision of the General Court of the European Union from 9 November 2022 in the case of the Minority SafePack Initiative vs the European Commission, the MSPI’s Citizens’ Committee and the FUEN Presidium took the decision to bring an appeal before the Court of Justice against the decision of the General Court. The appeal was filed on January 23.

“The court’s November decision stands in sharp contrast to the previous case-law of the European courts in ECI matters. Their communication starts by stating that “The action already taken by the European Union to emphasise the importance of regional or minority languages and to promote cultural and linguistic diversity is sufficient to achieve the objectives of the initiative”. This is clearly a political statement, and all European minorities know it to be false” – FUEN President MEP Loránt Vincze pointed out. “Our legal advisors assessed that there are a handful of problematic issues which make the November judgement doubtful from a legal point of view and are working on the appeal which we will bring before the Court of Justice before the deadline”, he added.

Following the Commission’s decision on 14 January 2021 not to initiate legal acts based on the proposals of the MSPI, on 24 March 2021 the Citizens’ Committee of the MSPI filed at the General Court of the European Union a request for the annulment of the European Commission’s decision on the initiative. The Citizens’ Committee, the FUEN – coordinator of the European signature collection campaign, and their legal representatives, based the submission on a careful legal examination of the Commission’s response. They concluded that the communication is deeply flawed by the fact that in it the European Commission infringed its legal obligation to state reasons and committed manifest errors of assessment. Hungary intervened in the case on behalf of the MSPI, while Greece and Slovakia on behalf of the Commission.

On 9 November 2022 the General Court of the European Union delivered its judgment in the case of the Minority SafePack Initiative vs the European Commission. The press release on the Court decision states that the EC proceeded correctly in refusing to propose legal acts based on the MSPI.

Background

In the European Union there are approximately 50 million persons belonging to autochthonous national minorities or speaking minority languages. Started in 2013 by the initiative of the FUEN, RMDSZ, SVP and YEN, the Minority SafePack is a European Citizens’ Initiative asking for European protection and promotion of their languages, cultures and rights. It is considered to be the most important initiative for minority rights in the last 30 years.

After an initial refusal of registration by the Commission, the MSPI was finally registered following a European Court decision in 2017. In a Europe-wide campaign coordinated by FUEN, 1,123,422 validated statements of support were collected, and the Minority SafePack Initiative became the fifth successful ECI ever. It also obtained the support of the Bundestag, the Hungarian Parliament, the lower chamber of the Dutch parliament, many regional parliaments, and, most importantly, the European Parliament, which voted a resolution in its support in December 2020. Despite this, the European Commission decided not to propose legal acts based on its proposals.

Further information: http://minority-safepack.eu

Source: https://fuen.org

September 18, 2021

Despite more than one million European citizens giving their signatures for the Minority SafePack Citizens’ Initiative and despite the European Parliament supporting it with a three-quarter majority and the German Bundestag also adopting a resolution in support of it, the initiative, which aimed to create EU protection for indigenous national minority communities, seems to have now failed after the European Commission rejected its legislative proposals.

“The Commission rejected the request of those for whom preserving Europe’s linguistic and cultural heritage is not merely a good-sounding slogan but a daily challenge. The position of the Commission is nothing more than a patronizing pat on our shoulders, while 1,128,385 signatories were waiting for concrete measures and actions.” – Lóránt Vincze, President of FUEN (Federal Union of European Nationalities), commented on the European Commission’s decision.

“The Commission has now let down the approximately 50 million citizens of the Union who belong to national and linguistic minorities. Millions of them already live in a situation of inequality in their own country; now the European Commission, which is supposed to be the guardian of democracy, the rule of law, dignity and justice, is also turning its back on them,” he said.

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On February 5, 2020 in Brussels, Belgium, representatives of the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ) and the Federal Union of European Nationalities (FUEN) presented legislation proposals to the European Commission for the Minority SafePack Initiative.

The signature drive initiated by RMDSZ, which is Romania’s ethnic Hungarian party, and coordinated by the Federal Union of European Nationalities was launched in April 2017.

The Minority SafePack Initiative calls upon the EU to adopt a set of legal acts to improve the protection of individuals belonging to national and linguistic minorities and to strengthen the cultural and linguistic diversity of the Union. The initiative was signed by 1,128,385 citizens of the 28 member states of the European Union, which makes it the fifth most successful European Citizens’ initiative.

Background

The European Commission first refused to register the initiative in 2013, prompting the organizers to appeal to the General Court of the EU. Later, in 2017, the court allowed it to proceed, and in the following year, organizers gathered more than 1.1 million supporting signatures across Europe, reaching the necessary thresholds in 11 Member States.

After this, the organizers could finally present their legislative proposals at the European Parliament, and the EP reacted to them very positively. In December 2020, the European Parliament decided to support the initiative with a three-quarter majority (524 MEPs voted in favor, 67 against, 103 abstentions). But the EP was not the only one; for example, even the German Bundestag unanimously adopted a resolution appealing to the European Commission to implement the Minority SafePack.

Despite all of the above, in January 2021, the European Commission finally decided against implementing the demands of the initiative.  According to their explanation, since the submission of the Minority SafePack in 2013, a wide range of measures have already undertaken various aspects of the initiative. Because of this, the Commission would not propose any further legal acts, as the European Union would meet the objectives of the initiative, including the protection of minorities, with the full implementation of the already existing legislation and measures. “While no further legal acts are proposed, the full implementation of legislation and policies already in place provides a powerful arsenal to support the Initiative’s goals,” said the European Commission’s statement released on January 15.