The European Citizens’ Initiative seeking greater rights for minorities in the European Union has collected over one million signatures, sufficient for the European Commission to consider it, organizers said on Tuesday.
The Minority Safepack campaign calls on the EU to enhance the protection of national and linguistic minorities through laws that promote languages, education, and culture, as well as access to media content and regional support.
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It emphasizes that nearly 50 million people in the EU, or about 10 percent of the population, belong to national minorities or speak a minority language.
Some examples include the Danish community in northern Germany, the Hungarian minority in Romania, Bretons in France, and Roma in Central European countries.
“The Minority Safepack initiative does not seek to take anything away from majority communities or Europe,” states the initiative’s website, adding: “It simply aims to make it more diverse with their languages and cultures.”
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The initiative has collected 1.2 million signatures across the EU. The data must now be verified by national authorities in each member state.
The European Commission must consider citizens’ initiatives that gather at least one million signatures in at least seven member states. The Commission can then decide whether to take any action on the matter and what that action should be.
