The civic association Pro Civis has started collecting signatures in the Felvidék in order to get the European Commission (EC) to reconsider its negative decision made in January regarding the Minority SafePack initiative, which aims to create a European legal system for the protection of minorities, Péter Őry, the head of the NGO, announced on Monday.

About 50 million people live in the countries of the European Union (EU) as members of a national indigenous minority. The Minority SafePack initiative was launched in order to create EU-level regulations for their protection. The initiative was successful thanks to the signatures collected in its support, and it was also supported by the European Parliament (EP) with its decision made last December. Nevertheless, the European Court of Justice decided on January 15 not to introduce legislation based on the proposals of the initiative.

"We cannot accept this decision of the European Commission and cannot ignore it"

said Péter Őry, speaking about the signature collection they started. He explained: in their statement supported by the signatures of the heads of the political parties and civil and social organizations of the indigenous Hungarian national minority in Slovakia, they call on the EC to review the decision rejecting the successful citizen initiative of the Minority SafePack. He added: the civil association Pro Civis is an NGO specialized in the local and county self-government affairs of the Hungarians in the Highlands, which is why they are starting the collection of supporting signatures in the regions of the Highlands inhabited by Hungarians.

Among other things, the statement states that the Minority SafePack initiative - which was supported by the signatures of more than one million EU citizens - expressed legitimate demands, and that it created a minority solidarity movement in Europe organized by the Federated Union of European Nationalities (FUEN), so that many minorities made European minority protection a common cause of the community. In the document, they point out: they are convinced that the EC has said no to a package of proposals whose aim is to create a Europe that regards linguistic and cultural diversity as a real value and protects and supports it. Based on all of this, they call on the European Court of Justice to correct its previous decision and put the proposals of the Minority SafePack back on the agenda, and they also ask the EP and the Committee of the Regions to once again put the matter of minority protection on the agenda and emphasize it in the direction of the European Court.

If we have more information about where you can sign the initiative of the Pro Civis civic association, we will publish it immediately.

MTI