PROTECT THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL IDENTITIES
OF THE ANCIENT REGIONS OF THE E.U.!
Signatures are being gathered to present an initiative to bring the special attention of the European Union to national minorities, and to have them establish a specific financing mechanism within the policies of EU territorial development that is direct, exclusive, and accessible for the different regional territories, preserving their social and cultural identity.
Sign before February 7, 2021
In order for our citizen initiative to be successful, a million European citizens’ signatures are needed, with a minimum number from at least seven member states of the Union.
That total number of signatures has been easily surpassed, and the minimum threshold of signatures has been reached in six Member States. But one more is needed, and the deadline in February 7, 2021. In Spain, there are already 32,300 of the 40,500 needed.
If that number of signatures is reached, the initiative will be taken into consideration and the European Commission will be obliged to discuss the matter, although any new legislation won’t be immediately applicable. Instead, at that time, a legislative process will begin in which the minority peoples and regions will become the protagonists to reaching new agreements with the larger nations currently governing them.
This is a project that we are very enthusiastic about, and which is a grassroots effort that started in the heart of Romania by the Szelker people, a community of ethnic Hungarians in Transylvania, which is the heart of modern-day Romania. Politics, wars, and the different international treaties that have followed each of those conflicts has left a territory of Hungarian culture under Romanian administration.
It’s not hard to imagine the problems this cultural group faces, with is 850,000 members all over the globe, when they try to preserve their culture and reach levels of autonomy that would allow them to at least in part recover some of the self-government they had for centuries. But if any reader does have a problem imagining it, we’ll give them a clue: three years ago, in January 2018, the then-president of Romania, Mihai Tudose, claimed that “If they hang the Szekler flag on institutions in Szeklerland, the people who fly these flags will hang as well. Autonomy for Szeklers is out of the question.” The next day, this prime minister stepped down after losing the confidence of his party. But the worst part is that it was not due to these statements, but rather to other causes.
This situation isn’t seen only in the persecution of the petition for autonomy for this national miniroty. They live in one of the poorest regions of Romania. And Romania is, alongside Bulgaria, one of the two poorest countries in the EU, with a per capita GDP that is 56% of the EU average. And despite this, they are relegated only to the arrival of European cohesion funds that are managed by the government in Bucarest, and that is not enough to guarantee the preservation of the personality of this community or its economic development.
And this is hardly the only case in the EU. There are more than a dozen minority territories in Europe that have their own identity that is being affected by this unjust situation.
And that is why the National Szekler Council set up this project to try to help all those national communities in Europe that are in a situation similar to their own.
We Europeans are so close to setting down the path to setting this injustice right. To get that process started, at least 9,000 more signatures are needed in Spain. We don’t think that’s too much to ask for to help these European nations build and preserve the different cultures that make them up. It’s a question of Justice and Solidarity. And it would be in our own self interest, as these European policies would also benefit us Basques, probably not with money, but definitely with EU guarantees, and that’s nothing to sniff at.
Where to sign to support the existence of a Cohesion policy for the equality of the regions and the preservation of regional cultures.
More information
Nationalregions – -Europe
European movement for protecting national regions
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Signiteurope – – Europe
PROTECT THE THOUSAND-YEAR-OLD
MINORITY NATIONS OF THE EU!
In the European Union, there are about 50 million people who belong to a national minority. Their lands are the national regions we, the civil organizers of the initiative stand for.
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Last Updated on Feb 2, 2021 by About Basque Country
