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 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 European Citizens’ Initiative on National Regions is to ensure that the European Union’s (EU) 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 2013, the European Commission refused to register the European Citizens’ Initiative on National Regions due to lack of EU competence. The organizers challenged the decision at the General Court of the EU (Case T-529/13 Izsák and Dabis v the Commission) which in 2016 dismissed the application. The initiators filed an appeal to the Court of Justice of the European Union (Case C-420/16 P Izsák and Dabis v Commission). On 7 March 2019, the Court annulled the Commission’s decision refusing to register the initiative. The Commission subsequently registered the European Citizens’ Initiative on National Regions, and the organizers could start collecting the statements of support. One million signatures needed from seven Member States originally should have been collected by 7 May 2020, but due to the coronavirus pandemic the deadline was multiple times extended up until 7 May 2021. Subsequently, the collected signatures were verified by the Member State authorities, which established the official result of the signature collection. A total of 1,269,352 valid statements of support were collected, the threshold for validity was met in eight Member States. The organizers have not yet submitted the successful initiative to the European Commission; according to their statement, the earliest this will take place after the new European Commission takes office in 2024. Once they submit their successful initiative, the European Commission will have to adopt a communication within six months on what steps it intends to take as a result of the initiative.