We live in Europe for centuries. We are autochthonous and traditional people, many of us saw borders shifted and live today in minority. It is not a choice, but it is the reality for us. We have chosen to continue to live in our homeland.
Our ancestors created a unique cultural wealth, they spoke their own languages, and followed their own traditions and customs. We aim to preserve and develop our identity, our cultures, and our languages.
We speak our mother tongue, and we want to be able to use it in everyday life and in the administration. We wish that our children were able to learn in their mother tongue in schools and to pass it to the next generations.
Different norms and different standards are applied by the states in the field of minority protection: some don’t recognize and disregard the aim of minorities, while others actively promote and protect them. We believe that the situation of European minorities can not be considered solely the internal affair of the states.
We are one hundred million Europeans, fifty million in the EU, members of autochthonous national minorities, nationalities, ethnic communities, regional and linguistic groups. Our objective is to strengthen the Council of Europe’s legal instruments and sanction mechanism. In the EU our goal is to create a EU legal framework on the protection of national minorities and language groups. We have a dream about a society where all languages and communities are equal, respected and cherished.
However, our determination and strength is not enough. We need the majority societies, we need our states and regions, and we need Europe to provide us the tools, which can support us to protect and to develop our cultures and our languages.
Under the umbrella of the Federal Union of European Nationalities 1,128,385 European citizens already joined our cause and started a movement for minority rights. By signing the Minority SafePack Initiative they asked the EU to improve the protection of persons belonging to national and linguistic minorities and strengthen cultural and linguistic diversity in the EU. The signatures of so many European citizens are an empowerment to make our voice heard in the EU institutions, national parliaments and governments, which should not be ignored.
Today, we need much more than that. We need a pact between minorities and majorities to create favorable conditions for linguistic and cultural diversity to thrive, to preserve and promote the identity of the minority communities, to stop their assimilation, to make them feel entirely at home on the territory where they have been living traditionally, to have a say in decisions that affect their lives, and to exercise autonomously their cultural, educational and linguistic rights.
We ask you to join our movement for minority rights.
Listen to us without prejudices.
Help us in becoming EU citizens with equal rights
We need to work together on a local, regional and European agenda.
We aim to put minority rights on the European agenda.
Be part of history in the making.
Although we are very prouf of the success of the petition campaign, and we consider it to be a big step towards reaching our goals, it doesn’t mean that our job is done. Our final goal is to have a European framework for the protection of autocthonous, historical minorities, nationalities and language groups. In the next period we will focus on lobbying and making the decision makers see that this is a legitimate desire that the minorities of Europe agree upon. Our other priority is to develop concrete legislative act proposals with legal experts in order to present to the European Commission not only the statements of support, but also the way in which we envision our demands to be put in practice.
The rights of the national and linguistic minorities are not always respected. In many cases their language and culture is endangered. These communities want to have the chance to live their life according to their own traditions. If we want to maintain a diverse Europe, the time has come to support and to promote their values too.
The Minority SafePack Initiative does not want to take anything from the majority communities or from Europe. It simply wants to make it more diverse with their languages and cultures.
Sign the petition and make the European Union a place where every person belonging to a national minority or a language group can feel at home!
The European Citizens’ Initiative is an instrument of direct democracy that was introduced by the European Union in 2012. If more than one million European citizens from at least seven Member States support an initiative proposed by a group of citizens, the European Commission must engage in the proposal.
It is a package of law proposals for the safety of the national minorities, a set of EU legal acts that enable the promotion of minority rights, language rights, and the protection of their cultures. In short, it sums up our main objectives: safety for minorities and legislative package for minorities.
The motto of the European Union is “In varietate concordia – United in diversity”. The purpose of the Minority SafePack Initiative is to encourage the European Union to live up to its motto and to improve the protection of people belonging to national and linguistic minorities and strengthen cultural and linguistic diversity in the Union. The European Union has ignored these requests too often in the past, and has left the minority issues to be dealt with on a Member State level, or by other international organisations.
We want the European Union to take responsibility and become a genuine promoter of cultural and linguistic diversity across Europe. We want the Copenhagen Criteria on protecting the rights of minorities to be observed also by the Member States of the EU.
The Minority SafePack Initiative includes eleven original proposals, nine of which were registered by the European Commission:
By signing for our initiative, you show the European Union that you would like it to strengthen cultural and linguistic diversity and minority rights.
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