Legal experts work on legislative proposals based on the Minority SafePack Initiative

The Federal Union of European Nationalities (FUEN) has drafted the first summary of the legislative proposals based on the Minority SafePack European Citizen’s Initiative.  The fifty page document prepared by the team of European legal experts includes provisions regulating all areas of minority protection addressed by the initiative, as well as the motivation of the measures proposed in the fields of education, culture, language rights, public administration, regional funds, media, Roma rights, state aid and the issues related to stateless minorities.

„I would like to take this opportunity and thank the legal experts for a comprehensive set of proposals, and for their devotion to this project” – stated Loránt Vincze. According to the FUEN President implementing these proposals will be possible in several stages. Some steps can be taken right away, while other actions will only be possible in the next multiannual financial framework, and some of the actions require an exhaustive political debate. „While a part of the measures proposed, should they be adopted, would seamlessly fit into the current EU framework, there are some, more ambitious proposals that require a longer debate. A third part of them would entail amending the EU treaties. The later kind mainly addresses general legal provisions for minority protection. Thus, our approach is, and has always been, that the adoption of a legislative framework for an EU level minority protection is a long term process. The experts have elaborated several proposals that would benefit autochthonous national minority communities in Europe” –stressed Loránt Vincze.

Due to the Copenhagen Criteria, enlarging the European Union towards the East has brought new momentum, a new political and legal context for minority protection in Europe. Candidate states have then met these criteria, but they have since experienced regresses in terms of minority rights. According to the experts, in the interest of preserving the cultural and linguistic diversity of Europe, the current framework of the EC would allow for the adoption of minority protection measures similar to those proposed by the Framework for National Roma Inclusion Strategies. Furthermore, the monitoring mechanism for assessing the state of rule of law could be extended to include monitoring the situation of national minorities, and the rapports adopted by the European Parliament in the field of minority protection could serve as a basis for legislative initiatives that the Commission could address.

The team of experts is expected to meet again in March, in Brussels, to continue to work on the proposal, improve it, and making it more adaptable to the current framework of the EC. The legislative proposals will likely be completed in April 2019.