News News from lost territories Offi­cials mark Szek­ler free­dom day

Offi­cials mark Szek­ler free­dom day

Katal­in Szili, the prime minister’s com­mis­sion­er, and Árpád János Potápi, state sec­re­tary at the Prime Minister’s Office, issued a joint state­ment to mark the Day of Szek­ler Free­dom, on Wednes­day. In their state­ment, the two offi­cials paid trib­ute to Szek­ler free­dom fight­ers exe­cut­ed in Tar­gu Mares/Marosvásárhely on March 10, 1854.

“This day is also to pay trib­ute to the courage of the Szek­ler peo­ple stand­ing unit­ed and fight­ing for auton­o­my defined with­in an Euro­pean frame­work and in line with fun­da­men­tal Euro­pean principles.” 

Sig­na­to­ries to the state­ment not­ed that the civ­il ini­tia­tive aimed at pro­mot­ing nation­al regions with­in the Euro­pean Union was now sup­port­ed by near­ly 1.2 peo­ple, adding that the high num­ber indi­cat­ed the high lev­el of “uni­ty and solidarity”.

Euro­pean Com­mis­sion rejects Minor­i­ty SafePack ini­tia­tive Zsolt Németh, the head of parliament’s for­eign affairs com­mit­tee, told a press con­fer­ence that the civ­il ini­tia­tive “must be kept in focus” until the offi­cial dead­line of May 7 in coun­tries where there are not enough signatures. 

He not­ed that one mil­lion sig­na­tures are need­ed, and while the min­i­mum num­ber of sig­na­tures have been col­lect­ed in 10 coun­tries, “expe­ri­ence shows that some 10 – 15 per­cent of the sig­na­tures tend to be invalid”. 

Németh said that the ini­tia­tive was aimed at cre­at­ing eth­nic regions with­in the bloc, which could be treat­ed equal­ly with oth­er regions in terms of the EU’s cohe­sion pol­i­cy. “Regret­ful­ly, regions with eth­nic minori­ties have suf­fered sys­tem­at­ic dis­crim­i­na­tion with regard to devel­op­ment pol­i­cy in the past decades,” he said, and men­tioned Szek­ler Land in Roma­nia and the Csal­lokoz region in south­ern Slovakia.

He insist­ed that the EU should cre­ate a nation­al minor­i­ty pro­tec­tion mech­a­nism, adding that “the pres­sure on the EU must be main­tained despite the Euro­pean Commission’s recent sweep­ing anoth­er, par­al­lel ini­tia­tive off the table, aimed at pro­tect­ing indige­nous eth­nic minorities”.

Source: dai​lynew​shun​gary​.com

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