European Citizens’ Initiative on National Regions
The European Citizens’ Initiative on National Regions was submitted to the European Commission on 18 June 2013 by the citizens’ committee of the citizens’ initiative established by the Szekler (Székely) National Council under the official title “Cohesion Policy for the Equality of the Regions and Sustainability of the Regional Cultures.” The aim of the citizens’ initiative is to ensure that the EU’s cohesion policy pays “special attention to regions with national, ethnic, cultural, religious or linguistic characteristics that are different from those of the surrounding regions.” In the opinion of the initiators a national region is a geographical area ”which has specific national, ethnic, religious or linguistic characteristics in that an indigenous national minority, also linked historically to it, constitutes the majority therein.” In 2013 the European Commission refused to register the initiative on the grounds that it fell outside the Commission’s powers to submit a proposal for a legal act of the Union for the purpose of implementing the Treaties (Case T-529/13 Izsák and Dabis v the Commission). The legal basis for the initiative comprises Articles 174-178 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). The initiators appealed to the Court of Justice of the European Union, which after lengthy litigation (Case C-420/16 P Izsák and Dabis v Commission), annulled the Commission’s decision on the application for registration of the citizens’ initiative on national regions on 7 March 2019. The Commission subsequently registered the initiative on 7 May 2019. The one million signatures needed from seven Member States had to be collected by 7 May 2020, but the deadline was extended to 7 November 2020 and 7 February 2021 in view of the Corona virus epidemic. By 7 May 2020 more than one million signatures had been collected from three Member States – Hungary, Romania and Slovakia – and by 7 February 2021 the necessary number of signatures had been collected from Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Spain, Sweden and Slovenia. The next step will be the validation of the signatures. If the required number of signatures per Member State is validated from seven Member States, the initiative is deemed successful. (See also: European Citizens’ Initiative, Minority SafePack European Citizens’ Initiative.)