The Minority SafePack Initiative’s Citizens’ Committee filed an appeal with the Court of Justice of the European Union in the context of the annulment proceedings brought by the MSPI against the European Commission. The Citizens’ Committee and the FUEN’s Presidium unanimously decided to appeal.
“We are confident that the Court of Justice will overrule the General Court’s decision of last November, which is not in line with its previous judgments concerning the European Citizens’ Initiatives. In our view, the decision has several procedural and substantive flaws. Our lawyer, Thomas Hieber, listed them in a twenty-five-page submission. In the reasoning of the tribunal, we did not receive a satisfactory answer to all our questions and arguments, and the claim that the EU had already done everything possible to protect minority languages and cultures as set out in the MSPI cannot be legally supported”, said Member of the European Parliament Loránt Vincze, President of FUEN.
The submission cites as an example of institutional bias the fact that the EC representatives met with representatives of the European Citizens’ Initiative entitled End the Cage Age on seven occasions, and only once with representatives of the MSPI, as required by the Statute. Also, the General Court’s decision refers to Council of Europe institutions and legal instruments of which the EU is not a part and which have not been ratified by several EU Member States.
“We deplore the fact that the General Court has repeated the European Commission’s position without any reflection, even though it is factually untrue on several points. We will pursue the legal route, we will use all means at our disposal, we owe this to the more than fifty million EU citizens who speak a minority language. We are already successful in raising awareness of the problems of autochthonous minorities, but we will not give up until we have achieved concrete measures”, stressed Loránt Vincze.
Source and full article here