Minority SafePack Initiative Will Appeal Decision of EU General Court

Image: FUEN

The Minority SafePack (MSPI) is aimed at the adoption of a number of legal acts to improve protections for persons belonging to national and linguistic minorities, and to promote cultural and linguistic diversity in the European Union. The organizers of the initiative gathered more than 1 million signatures in support of the initiative, and also received the support of the German Bundestag, the Hungarian Parliament, the lower chamber of the Dutch Parliament, and of many regional parliaments. In December 2020, the European Parliament adopted a resolution in support of the initiative, however the European Commission (EC) decided not to enact any legal acts based on the proposals of the Minority SafePack initiative.

Following the Commission’s decision of January 2021, on 24 March, 2021 the Citizens’ Committee of the MSPI filed a request with the General Court of the European Union for the annulment of the European Commission’s decision on the initiative.

The Citizens’ Committee, FUEN and their legal representatives, “based the submission on a careful legal examination of the Commission’s response. They concluded that the communication is deeply flawed by the fact that in it the European Commission infringed its legal obligation to state reasons and committed manifest errors of assessment,” noted FUEN in a recent statement.

On 9 November 2022, the General Court of the European Union delivered its judgment, stating that the EC proceeded correctly in refusing to propose legal acts based on the MSPI.

According to a statement released on 13 January, “the MSPI’s Citizens’ Committee and the FUEN Presidium took the decision to bring an appeal before the Court of Justice against the decision of the General Court.”

Lóránt Vincze, President of FUEN and an MEP noted, “The court’s November decision stands in sharp contrast to the previous case-law of the European courts in ECI matters. Their communication starts by stating that “The action already taken by the European Union to emphasise the importance of regional or minority languages and to promote cultural and linguistic diversity is sufficient to achieve the objectives of the initiative”. This is clearly a political statement, and all European minorities know it to be false.”

The full statement can be found on the website of FUEN.