The 62nd Congress of the Federal Union of European Nationalities (FUEN) took place in Cluj-Napoca (Kolozsvár), Transylvania, Romania, from 17-21 May 2017. The long-standing umbrella organisation that includes 90 member organisations from 32 states has achieved the most important stage of its functioning. The Europe-wide signatures collecting action was symbolically launched today at the Congress of FUEN in Cluj-Napoca, which aims to collect one million signatures for supporting the Minority SafePack, a package of measures elaborated by FUEN for the protection of national minorities. On behalf of SMK-MKP party president József Menyhárt, József Berényi, Vice-Chairman of Trnava District and Pál Csáky, MEP, attended the Congress of historical significance. The Minority SafePack aims at creating legal acts and a system of supervisory institutions for promoting traditional national minorities, and regional and minority languages at the level of the European Union, which will effectively safeguard these national and language communities even against a given EU member state.

The Minority SafePack’s version originally submitted had been rejected by the European Commission in 2013, and the Commission gave the green light to a slightly modified version of the initiative only after the initiators won the legal case against the European Commission at the EU Court in Luxembourg. The initiative that is of historical significance for European national language minorities was registered by the European Commission in April 2017. However, in order for the European Commission to initiate the adoption of legislation at EU level for the protection of minorities on the basis of the Minority SafePack, more than one million signatures must be collected from at least 7 EU Member States by the end of March 2018. In Slovakia, signatures collection is organised by SMK-MKP which being a long-standing and active member of FUEN.
(www.mkp.sk, 19 May 2017)