STOP LANGUAGES IN EUROPE
FROM BECOMING EXTINCT!
Click for the story of Goaitsen
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.
Copyright FUEN for the Minority SafePack Initiative Citizens’ Committee 
Now he is retired. One day he accidentally leaves the stove on. The kitchen is already burning by the time he notices, so he calls the 112 emergency number. A friendly lady, Anita, answers the phone, but since the emergency line was recently centralised to another part of the country, she does not speak Frisian and Goaitsen has trouble making himself understood in Dutch. As a consequence Anita sends the firemen to Wynaldum instead of Wyns, and Goaitsen’s house burns down to the ground, before the firemen eventually arrive one hour late.
His story proves how crucial it can be to use your mother tongue, and make yourself understood in your mother tongue. In Wales (United Kingdom) for example there is always at least one person on each shift who can speak Welsh at the emergency centre. This is definitely a good practice worth sharing and promoting in the Netherlands and in the entire EU.
According to UNESCO, the world has over 6000 languages. If nothing is done, half of these will disappear by the end of the 21st century. Humanity would lose not only a cultural wealth but also important ancestral knowledge embedded in these languages. The key for the survival of smaller languages is to use themanywhere, anytime, in all possible contexts.
Everywhere in Europe and around the world, new solutions are being developed for language learning and for the use of different languages in practice to cater for the need of small language communities.
We call upon the EU to establish and provide funding to a Language Diversity Centre in the field of regional and minority languages, focusing on the smallest and most vulnerable language communities in Europe. The Language Diversity Centre shall provide information, knowledge and expertise and pool resources that can help different language communities to learn from each other.
One of their hobbies is attending Fest-Noz (Night Festival), where they can dance traditional Breton dances accompanied by singing and often by instrumental music as well. The couple loves the 400 years old tradition of Fest-Noz, because it is an entertaining way of expressing their identities, and they enjoy socialising with other members of the Breton community. They help organize the Fest-Noz in their village, one of over a thousand similar annual events taking place in Brittany. Since 2012, Fest-Noz is on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritages of Humanity.
The Breton Fest-Noz shows us how a cultural tradition can revitalize a whole community and become a symbol of it, how it can also become a role model for other regions or Member States. Let us not forget: it took hard work from hundreds of people to make this happen. Some minority communities do not have the resources to organize such events on their own, and in some cases the Members States hinder their initiatives and there are no EU funds available to support them.
While the majority communities enjoy their language rights and culture by default, in public and with public funding, the same treatment is just a dream or a privilege for some minorities.
We call on the EU to protect and support its cultural diversity and guarantee equal access to European funds – because we all pay taxes.
Ádám had the opportunity to learn about the world in geography class in his mother tongue in primary school in the village where they live. But now that he will become a 5th grader, his parents face a choice. He would either have to travel 20 kilometres every day, by himself, to the neighbouring city, where education is available in his mother tongue or stay at home and continue in a Romanian school.
His sister Anna will soon be of school age, and the decision in her case seems to be even more difficult: if the minimum number of pupils for a class is not met, there will be no Hungarian first grade class at all in the village. Small children will have to take a long journey every day to the next Hungarian school or she will go to the Romanian school without being able to learn to read or write properly in her own language.
You may have heard about similar stories in many EU states. The mother tongue is a key element of identity preservation and besides family the school plays an important role in shaping the identity of children as they grow up. If this opportunity is taken away, children belonging to minorities would surely step on the path of assimilation.
Although Europe’s cultural richness is based on linguistic and cultural diversity, and its people, the current linguistic and cultural policies tend to favour the official languages of the Member States. Action is needed. The EU and the Member States should create favourable conditions for linguistic and cultural diversity to thrive.
We call on the EU for a Recommendation in which the EU shall define best ways to protect and promote cultural and linguistic diversity, in particular for the protection and use of regional and minority languages in the areas of public administration, public services, education, culture, in the judiciary, media, health care, commerce and consumer protection.
Furthermore, any criteria that exclude regional and minority languages from the EU funding programmes should be abolished in the new programme generations for education, training, youth and culture.
His children attend the Danish school in Flensburg, which is considered to be the best in the city. His community enjoys extended language rights, cultural autonomy; they can manage their own schools, clubs and social establishments. Their double loyalty to the German state and to the Danish people is never questioned.
From his elders he has heard many stories about how ethnic Germans were oppressed while Schleswig was part of the Danish crown, and how later ethnic Danes were suffering from discrimination under Prussian rule. After 1920 the province was divided between the Denmark and Germany. This is old history now.
In the Bonn-Copenhagen Declarations of 1955, Germany and Denmark promised to uphold the rights of each other’s minority communities. Today there is trust and an excellent relationship between the two states and the two minority communities contribute substantially to the well-being of the region as a whole.
The German-Danish regional cooperation, which is based on the added value of the minority communities from both sides of the border, is a great example for the whole of Europe.
We call on the EU to amend the common provisions of the regional funds in such a way that the thematic objectives include the protection of national minorities and the promotion of cultural and linguistic diversity.
They love football, just as most fellows from Europe do.As members of the German speaking community, they mostly watch German or Austrian TV channels. Except for football games. The broadcast of the German and Austrian programs stops when an international play starts. Claus, Astrid, Alfons and Giorgio heard about geoblocking and copyrights, but they don’t care about the details. They only want to watch football with commentaries in their mother tongue. Same as millions of sports fans all over the EU.
Every European citizen shall have the right to enjoy culture and entertainment in his own language. It`s time to say goodbye to digital borders, time for a European single market for copyright.
We call on the EU to establish a unitary European copyright that will lead to the abolishment of licensing barriers within the Union. We propose an amendment with the effect of ensuring that there will be freedom of service and freedom of reception of audio-visual content in those regions where the minorities live.
In the Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia, there are still many non-citizens of Russian descent. The Roma who are affected by statelessness, are mostly former citizens of Yugoslavia and their offspring. After the dissolution of the Soviet-Union and Yugoslavia, the successor states had discriminating regulations and difficult bureaucratic conditions for registering, which were often an obstacle to become citizens of the newly formed states. Also for the Roma who fled the war in the nineties and their offspring, it has been extremely difficult to become citizens in their new countries of living.
There are hundreds of thousands of stateless persons in Europe, many belonging to national minorities. They are the most endangered minorities of the EU. As the Member States do not consider them citizens, they don’t have access the most basic rights, including the right to residence or to have a legal job. The denial of citizenship in the country where they live, is, in fact, a form of cultural and economic oppression.
The EU, however, can legislate in this area and give stateless persons the right to have a residence, to work, to provide services, to travel within the EU and many other rights that EU citizens have in countries other than their own.
We call upon the EU to adopt an amendment to the directives that allow for the approximation of the rights of long-term stateless persons and their families to those of EU-citizens.
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