FUEN acquires seat as observer in the DH-MIN committee

FUEN (Federal Union of European Nationalities) recently occupied its observer seat in the DH-MIN committee of the Council of Europe for the first time. FUEN-president Hans Heinrich Hansen participated in the two-day meeting of the body in Strasbourg.

DH-MIN is the committee of the Council of Europe, in which government officials meet each other to talk about European minority issues and to exchange experiences from their domestic practice. Not in the last place in working out the two basic minority documents, the framework convention and the language charter and the monitoring of these instruments, the committee has a central role.

After some troubles in the beginning, FUEN reached to acquire an observer post in the committee and on invitation of its chair Judit Solymosi it took the position of observer for the first time.

“We are very satisfied that we as civil society representative of the European minorities acquired an observer status. As FUEN it is our stated aim together with the European minorities and the states in which they live in to find advantageous solutions for both sides. This can only take place in dialogue. Therefore our presence in the DH-MIN committee is right and important”, the FUEN-president explains after the meeting in Strasbourg.

Amongst other things on the agenda was a report about the recently held jubilee conference on the framework convention for the protection of national minorities. The chair of the Advisory Committee Mr. Alan Phillips gave a report on the results of the conference. In this respect FUEN-president asked attention for the intervention of FUEN that one has to talk about for which groups the convention should be applicable in the future.

At the moment there is no consensus if the area of application of the convention that was written for the autochthonous minorities should be extended also to new minority groups.

Furthermore Hans Heinrich Hansen (see photo) was able to report about the European Dialogue Forum established together with the European Parliament, and that will provide a formalised cooperation between the civil society organisation FUEN and the European Parliament.

During the meeting also a successor was elected for Judit Solymosi. In the coming 6 months the committee is led by a Croat.

Source: http://www.fuen.org/press/20081110_EAC_EN.html