Zsolt Nemeth, head of parliament’s foreign affairs committee, on Saturday added his signature to the Minority SafePack, a European Citizens’ initiative which the government is promoting with a view to protecting the rights Hungarians living beyond the country’s borders.

Speaking at a leadership training event for ethnic Hungarian high school students and teachers, Nemeth noted that 1 million signatures must be collected by April 3 in order to launch talks on creating a minority protection system within the European Union. Adequately protecting the rights of ethnic Hungarian “requires serious local and international legal endeavours”, Nemeth said.

Arguing that the European Union had no systemic protection for ethnic minorities, he said the international situation with regard to the protection of minorities was “abysmal”.

The Hungarians living in neighboring countries have become increasingly involved in cross-border integration thanks to the government’s national cohesion policy in recent years, he said, adding that they had become united by this legal initiative.

International publicity is a useful tool in achieving the community’s goals, he added.

The initiative was launched by the Federal Union of European Nationalities (FUEN) in January to focus the EU’s attention on the situation of “indigenous national minorities” within the bloc.

Source and photo: MTI