The Minority SafePack facilitates minority media in Europe

FUEN President Loránt Vincze attended a conference entitled Strengthening Minority Language Media in Europe - A Central and Eastern European Overview. He presented a European perspective on the minority media. The conference took place in the European Parliament on Wednesday afternoon, June 7th 2017. The event was hosted by Hungarian MEPs Andor Deli, Andrea Bocskor, Pál Csáky, Tamás Deutsch, Csaba Sógor and László Tőkés. The meeting was a opportunity for experts and representatives of minority language media from Ukraine, Serbia, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary to present and discuss the situation of minority media services in Central and Eastern Europe.

Introduced by Andor Deli, Hungarian MEP from Serbia, President Vincze spoke about the role of minority media in society. “There is a strong link between minority representation, minority rights and minority media. Besides the right to use the mother tongue, the right to education in mother tongue, the protection and preservation of the culture, the access to the minority media is an important pillar of minority rights”, stated the FUEN President. He also added that the media for minority communities needs the same financial support from the home state and the kin-state as any other cultural or educational institution would. In order to fulfil its role, it would need an autonomous financial framework.

In the second part of his presentation, Mr Vincze talked about the two proposals of the FUEN’s Minority SafePack Initiative regarding the issue of minority media and media services in mother tongue languages. He explained that many citizens belonging to national minorities speak a language that is the majority language of another country so they usually depend on the media of these (neighboring) countries.

“We propose the establishment of a unitary European copyright, meaning that the European Union would become a common media market. Before such a single market can be established, we propose an amendment ensuring that there will be freedom of service and freedom of reception of audio-visual content in the regions where national minorities live”, said Mr. Vincze. He further added, that the second proposal is a block exemption of state aid – the minimis rule – for activities that support minority communities and their culture. This would include culture and heritage conservation, the promotion of languages and regional diversity and mass media.

The FUEN President asked for the support of the politicians, experts and journalists attending the conference in promoting the Minority SafePack Initiative in the upcoming months in order to reach the goal of collecting 1 million signatures and raising awareness amongst the European civil society.