The European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency should address minority issues
MEP Csaba Sógor criticized the annual report of the The Fundamental Rights Agency presented this Thursday in the European Parliament, which failed to evaluate the situation of autochthonous national minorities living in the member states.
The EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency presented the rapport entitled: ”Fundamental Rights: Challenges and Achievements in 2013” on the 4th of September 2013, at the Civil Liberty, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (LIBE) meeting of the EP. RMDSZ MEP Csaba Sógor is a member of this Committee.
A debate followed the presentation of the rapport, during which Hungarian MEPs Csaba Sógor from Romania and Pál Csáky from Slovakia expressed the need to broaden the European framework of fundamental rights to include minority protection. ''It is the mission of the Fundamental Rights Agency to collect data on and provide support for the institutions and member states in the aim of guaranteeing fundamental rights for all EU citizens, therefore I am sad to see that the agency failed to include data on the situation of autochthonous national minorities in its annual rapport”, pointed out Csaba Sógor during the debate, adding that it is all the more surprising to see this, since more than ten percent of all EU citizens belong to a linguistic or national minority.
The MEP also warned that the fundamental rights provisions of the European Union’s Treaty cannot be enforced until the Fundamental Rights Agency did not extend its framework to evaluate the situation of national minorities. Hungarian MEP from Slovakia Pál Csáky urged the creation of a European minority protection framework, pointing out that autochthonous national minorities are constituent elements of EU member states, having substantially contributed to the development of the regions they live in.
