The European Union should not wait for another conflict to arise before resolving the situation of minorities, said Katalin Szili, chief advisor to the prime minister, at the launch of a book entitled The protection of national minorities in the European Union in Bratislava (Pozsony) on Tuesday.
At the presentation of the book entitled The protection of national minorities in the European Union, co-authored by Katalin Szili, Ferenc Kalmár, and György Andrássy, the chief advisor to the prime minister said that the book presents her experiences in this field over the past thirty years and since Hungary’s accession to the EU.
No one in the European Union is concerned with the issue of national minorities,”
said Katalin Szili, adding that this is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the EU swept aside the citizens’ initiative launched partly by the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ) and partly by the Sekler National Council (SZNT) on this issue.
She said that two pieces of legislation were passed in the 1990s—the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages—which set out the framework that must be observed in matters concerning national minorities, but thirty years have passed since then and much has happened.
She explained that in 2014, the number of immigrant communities was around 14 million, and today it is 29 million, and the two issues, the rights of immigrant communities and indigenous national minorities, are beginning to converge, which shows that the European community is not addressing either of them.
She said that they had drafted a proposal with which they would like to either supplement the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities or create a framework regulation based on it that would be binding on all countries.
She explained that this would include the EU recognizing that the issue of minorities is not an internal matter for individual member states, but a European issue, and that the EU would recognize the need for all countries to stipulate in their constitutions that the national communities living there are state-forming factors, and that it would also be important to recognize collective rights.
Without collective rights, all efforts by the majority society to integrate national minorities will lead to assimilation,”
pointed out Katalin Szili. She added that one of their goals is to get the volume to Brussels, where it would be put on the agenda of the relevant committee, and to Strasbourg, where the Council of Europe would also deal with it, which could prevent much bigger problems and possible conflicts from arising.
Via MTI; Featured photo: Pexels
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