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

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 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

PRESS RELEASES