I live as a minoritarian within a vast majority of an other ethnic and religious group. As we live in the Eastern part of Europe, which went through a lot of  historical changes and uneasiness, also five decades of communist totalitarianism, people’s minds are quite confused. Law and order does not function as in well established democracies. The rights of the national and linguistic minorities are not always respected. In many cases their language and culture is endangered.

These traditional ethnic communities live in different countries then their linguistic majority due to the tormented history. They only want to preserve their language, traditions. In order to be able to do so, they need not only individual rights but also community rights to have their schools, newspapers and so on. A recent example in Romania is the case of a Catholic school. The building was owned by the Catholic Church before the II world war, then confiscated by the communist regime. After the Romanian revolution a long debate and juridical process started on the situation of different properties of the Catholic Church. Some properties were given back, in other cases the law was changed or the decision later reversed.

InTg Mures the local community wanted to start a Hungarian-speaking Catholic school in the building owned by the Catholic Church, but on local level it did not get the necessary permit to do so, although no real and lawful obstacle existed. Without telling all the complicated juridic details, it is a fact that the case got to governmental forum and constitutional boards, and at the moment a religious and ethnic minority in Romania cannot start its school in its own building.

And many other cases could be ennumerated. We do not want quarrel, lawsuits on a daily basis, nor an ethnic war. If we want to maintain a diverse Europe, the time has come to support and to promote their values too. The Minority SafePack Initiative does not want to take anything from the majority communities or from Europe. It simply wants to make it more diverse with their languages and cultures.

Sign the petition and make the European Union a place where every person belonging to a national minority or a language group can feel at home!

Minority SafePack – One million signatures for diversity in Europe