FUEN Prize 2025 awarded to Elisabeth Sándor-Szalay for her lifelong commitment to minority rights

A highlight of the FUEN Congress in Bozen/Bolzano was the presentation of the FUEN Prize 2025 to Univ.-Prof. Elisabeth Sándor-Szalay, honouring her outstanding contribution to the protection of human and minority rights and her lifelong commitment to strengthening Europe’s minority communities.

Prof. Sándor-Szalay has served for twelve years as the Deputy Commissioner for Fundamental Rights responsible for the rights of national minorities in Hungary, where she has tirelessly advocated for equality, participation, and dialogue. Her work has been instrumental in promoting minority education and culture, combating discrimination, and ensuring that minority issues remain on the political and public agenda—both nationally and internationally.

In her laudatio, FUEN Vice President Olivia Schubert described the laureate as “engaged, competent, mediating, persistent, integrative, and deeply human.” She praised Prof. Sándor-Szalay’s bridge-building approach between minorities, governments, and European institutions, as well as her respect, empathy and hands-on presence among minority communities.

In her acceptance speech, Prof. Sándor-Szalay expressed deep gratitude to FUEN and its member organisations “for the decades-long efforts and work they have done since the network was established in 1949”, and paid tribute to communities across Europe who “work every day to better enforce national minority rights.” Reflecting on her career, she said it was “an exceptional honour” to receive the award in Bozen/Bulsan/Bolzano – “an iconic location for the protection of national minority rights” – just a week before the end of her twelve-year term of office.

She described the prize as a “double gift” of place and time, representing both recognition and motivation to continue her work as a university professor and as head of the Centre for European Research and Education at the University of Pécs.

The FUEN Prize was accompanied by the artwork “Two Bridges” by Simone Bruhn from the Danish minority in Germany, symbolising FUEN’s values of connection, stability, and peaceful coexistence in Europe.

The evening concluded with a cultural presentation by the South Tyrolean hosts and a convivial Minority Market — a fitting celebration of diversity and dialogue at the start of the FUEN Congress.