ECR Bureau Member Raymund Kovács highlighted that with its decision not to introduce legislation to protect national minorities under the Minority SafePack initiative, the European Commission had effectively "turned its back on indigenous minorities". The European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) has been serving the purpose of closing the gap between citizens and the EU – "an opportunity for citizens to directly shape the future of the EU". However, for Mr Kovács, who is also a Member of the Local Government of District 16 of Budapest, the ECIs "cannot be deemed a success story".

During the European Committee of the Regions' (CoR) debate, he urged for the ECI to be "more simple and effective". Mr Kovács continued to say that 76 initiatives had been registered, but the required signatures were collected in only six cases, and the European Commission had given a partially favourable answer on only two occasions.

The Minority Safe Pack Initiative affects 50 million citizens of the EU belonging to national and linguistic minorities. Its aim is to protect the language rights of indigenous national minorities and provide financial support to regions inhabited by these groups, and preserve the linguistic diversity of the EU.

With its decision, the European Commission not only turned its back on the indigenous minorities, but also the citizens who supported the initiative, the European Parliament that adopted a resolution by a large majority, and the supportive national and regional parliaments. Mr Kovács claimed that such a decision "disregards the request of more than one million citizens".

Mr Kovács concluded his intervention by asking the Vice-President of the European Parliament, Mr Pedro Silvo Pereira, to closely follow the initiative entitled “Cohesion Policy for regional equalities and for the sustainability of regional cultures", which may succeed in gathering the required amount of signatures. He called on the MEP to " do the most we can to show European citizens that their views are being taken into account and that the EU is ready to reduce the shortcomings currently present in the functioning of democracy".
 

The debate took place in the framework of the CoR February plenary.