European Minorities optimistic after hearing at the EU Court

This Friday morning, the hearing for the Minority SafePack Initiative took place at the General Court of the EU in Luxemburg. 

The two lawyers for the Minority SafePack Initiative, Prof h.c. Ernst Johansson (Kiel) and Dr Thomas Hieber (Brussels) had come to Luxemburg accompanied by FUEN President Loránt Vincze, his predecessor and Representative of the citizens’ committee for the Minority SafePack Initiative Hans Heinrich Hansen and FUEN legal advisor Frank de Boer.

“The oral hearing started with a strong plea by the lawyers for the Minority SafePack Initiative, in which they made clear that not only did the European Commission fail to provide sufficient reasoning for its decision to reject the Minority SafePack Initiative, but that the Commission also was wrong in denying that it has no competence to implement a number of measures contained in the Minority SafePack Initiative, said FUEN legal advisor Frank de Boer.

FUEN President Loránt Vincze “The European minorities have a strong case, we feel optimistic about the upcoming judgment on our initiative. The proposals that we prepared would improve the linguistic and cultural life of the minorities in Europe. During the hearing it became clear that at least the greatest part of our proposal is admissible and the European Commission should have been taking into account this fact when it refused the registration.”

Hans Heinrich Hansen, the Representative of the citizens’ committee for the Minority SafePack Initiative said: “I am very pleased with how the discussion at the court went. In my opinion we took the right decision when we decided to appeal against the rejection decision from the European Commission.”

The representative of the European Commission tried to defend its position, but he had to answer a great number of questions from the Court. “We consider this to be a good sign for our case”, said the lawyers for the citizens’ committee, Prof h.c. Johansson und Dr Hieber.

The European minorities were support in the case by Hungary.

The Court announced that they will soon publish their judgment.