Written statement on the Ferrara report

Today we still have national linguistic minorities living within EU borders that face discrimination and are treated as second class citizens.
As co-chair of the Intergroup for Traditional Minorities, National Communities and Languages I regret to see plenty of cases which are missing in the report.
Especially I would raise the attention on the situations of the Hungarian minority in Romania and Slovakia.
 
The report is a highly political document, which under the veil of 'fundamental human rights', covers a whole range of positions that overstep EU competence and are highly controversial among European citizens.
 
Although being sympathetic with Mrs Ferrara for the huge amount of energy she had to put into this report, as in 2010 I was also rapporteur of the same report, nevertheless I cannot agree with her proposal.
 
The report proposes a new rule of law mechanism, which I don’t consider necessary, because a mechanism to check the state of fundamental rights in Member States already exists.
 
As we have witnessed during the past years the political groups of the left use fundamental rights politically and would use politically a new rule of law mechanism against the governments led by EPP parties, such as in Hungary.