- Press releases
The Minority SafePack passed the milestone of over 600 000 signatures collected for the initiative – announced FUEN President Loránt Vincze on Thursday, 1st of February in Berlin. He believes that the goal of gathering the necessary one million signatures is achievable. He encouraged the member organisations of the FUEN to reach out to new partners and mobilize people to support the European Citizen’s Initiative that aims for an EU level protection for autochthonous minorities and language groups.
Over 215 000 people have signed the online petition while further 150 000 signatures have been collected in Romania, 100 000 in Hungary, and over 55 000 in Slovakia.
"The petition campaign is trending in Poland, Spain, Denmark and Austria, and we hope even more people from Italy and Germany will be signing the initiative. The number of signatures arriving from Croatia, Slovenia and Latvia follow closely and they should be able to reach the minimum number of signatures required soon", said the President.
The Minority SafePack Initiative needs to be signed by at least one million European Citizens in order to succeed. Furthermore, it has to pass a certain number of signatures, a national threshold in at least seven Member States before the deadline at the beginning of April.
"We already passed the threshold in Romania, Hungary and Slovakia. We aim to pass the required minimum in Slovenia, Croatia, Poland, Austria, Italy, Denmark and Latvia, and I am optimistic that we can have the same result in Bulgaria, Spain and The Netherlands", added Loránt Vincze at FUEN’s Media Forum entitled "Politics and Media for Minorities: Information, Network, Communication" held this week in Germany. The President asked for the support of the minority media but also of the mainstream media in getting the message of the initiative to the public.
"I would have been happy to say today that we already have the necessary one million signatures, and that the ones we will collect from now on only further accentuate the desire of the citizens of Europe to urge the EU to have this issue on the agenda. Unfortunately, this is not the case. We have had to realize that reaching out to the 50 million Europeans belonging to minority communities or language groups proves to be more difficult than we have ever imagined. Finding the right message to convince the majority population to engage in our initiative is even more complicated. Only a mere few of our member organizations have the knowledge, the resources and the determination to run a petition campaign. The organizations which were able to collect many signatures need to collect even more, and we also need to reach out to new partners and networks.
"I believe, in the end we will have the one million signatures, but we need to energetically fight for this cause to the last minute... Time is crucial: we only have two months left to reach our goal. We are fully aware of the immense responsibility this entails, and we are equally confident about the strength of our minority solidarity”, concluded the President of the FUEN.
