Minority Safepack over 1 million signatures!

Minority SafePack, an initiative seeking EU protection for the indigenous minorities in the bloc, has surpassed 1 million signatures, the amount necessary for the European Commission to put the scheme on its agenda.

The initiative was launched by the Federal Union of European Nationalities (FUEN), which made the announcement in Cluj-Napoca/Kolozsvár on Thursday.

Minority SafePack calls on the European Union to “undertake legal action” to better protect ethnic minorities within the EU and support a multilingual, multicultural Europe, FUEN said.

Although the one million signatures are in place, further ones will be collected until the April 3 midnight deadline to offset potentially invalid signatures, the union said.

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán congratulated Hunor Kelemen, head of the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ), on the initiative surpassing 1 million signatures, the PM’s press chief said.

“I was happy to hear that enough European citizens have declared that they want a Europe which jointly stands up for indigenous national minorities living in the European Union,” Orbán said in his congratulatory letter. “We are proud that the number of signatories to the initiative for the protection of national minorities launched by the Federal Union of European Nationalities and RMDSZ has surpassed 1 million,” Orbán wrote. “Now it is up to the European Union to endorse the citizens’ initiative.”

Source: MTi