Diversity should not only be a nice slogan

President of the Federal Union of European Nationalities (FUEN) Loránt Vincze delivered a keynote speech at the first edition of this year’s series of dinner debates organised by the Coppieters Foundation.

At the dinner debate, Vincze cautioned the European Commission that diversity should not only be a nice slogan and explained that minorities in Europe need support and protection. According to him, “there needs to be action behind the words, especially for the protection of endangered languages and national minorities.”

FUEN’s representative in Brussels explained the state of play of the European Minority Safepack Initiative, a process that aims to gather one million signatures for minority rights. So far, the initiative has gathered 40% of the signatures needed to ask the European Commission to act in 9 key areas linked to minority rights:

1. EU recommendations for the protection and promotion of cultural and linguistic diversity;
2. Funding programmes for small linguistic communities;
3. The creation of a Language Diversity Centre;
4. The EU’s regional development funds to include the protection of national minorities and the promotion of cultural and linguistic diversity as an objective;
5. Research about the added value of minorities to our societies and Europe;
6. Equality for stateless minorities, such as the Roma;
7. A single European copyright law, so that services and broadcasts can be enjoyed in minority languages;
8. Freedom of service and reception of audio-visual content in minority regions;
9. Block exemption of regional (state) support for minority culture, media and cultural heritage conservation.

Sign here if you want to support this initiative: www.minority-safepack.eu

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This dinner debate is an initiative of Coppieters Foundation.

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This event is financially supported by the European Parliament. The European Parliament is not liable for the content of the conference or the opinions of the speakers.

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