1,128,385 certified signatures for the Minority SafePack Initiative

It’s official: the Minority SafePack is a successful European Citizens’ Initiative. National authorities in all 28 Member States of the European Union have verified the signed statements of support and validated a total number of 1,128,385 signatures. It is now also certified that the MSPI managed to reach the national threshold in 11 member states: Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Latvia, Spain, Denmark, Croatia, Slovenia, Lithuania and Italy.

The national authorities validated more than 85 percent of all statements of support, which represents a slightly better average than those of the previous successful European Citizens’ Initiatives. Out of the more than 70 ECI’s, the MSPI is only the fifth that managed to fulfill the requirements of one million valid statements of support and seven member states where the national threshold is reached.

The FUEN believes it is a big victory for the autochthonous minorities, nationalities and language groups of Europe. „I congratulate our campaign team and thank our member organisations, partners, and all the organisations who joined us in collecting the signatures, for the very precise and coordinated work of all of them. We highly appreciate the national authorities’ flawless work in the validation process. The most important are the people who believed in our cause and gave their statements of support. They gave us the much needed power and entrusted us with their signature, and now we have a huge responsibility towards them and towards all the 50 million EU citizens who belong to a national minority or language group” – said Loránt Vincze, the president of FUEN, the organisation in charge of coordinating the initiative. “This is a clear message of a European movement for national minorities: we want the European Union to protect our communities and to promote our cultural and linguistic rights. In the next period we will do everything in our power to ensure the success of the Initiative, to obtain the support of the majorities and relevant political forces in the EU” – he concluded.

The FUEN and the Citizens’ Committee will approach the European Commission in autumn for a discussion on the future steps of the Minority SafePack Initiative.