Brussels, 27/02/2003 (Agence Europe) - The Vice-President of the Hungarian National Assembly, Jozsef Szajer, who represents the Hungarian parliamentarians at the European Convention, presented to the press on Thursday a "contribution" to the Convention in which he suggests that the draft Constitution should foresee the creation of a new Community institution that would represent national and ethnic minorities in the future enlarged European Union. The new body, the Committee of National and Ethnic Minorities (CONEM), would only have consultative competence (as is the case, for example, for the Committee of the Regions) each time that the EU prepares to legislate in a field that has direct influence on the life of EU minorities. According to Mr Szajer's proposal, the CONEM would be composed of 200 representatives at most from the various national and ethnic minorities living in the Member States. It would be up to the EU Council of Ministers to decide by unanimity and on the basis of available statistical data what minorities living in the various member countries could be represented in the Committee, and also in what proportion. Mr Szajer considers that each minority made up of at least 15,000 persons in a member country should be entitled to a representative from the country concerned. This number should then be increased by one unit for every 100,000 persons, with a maximum of 5 representatives for any one minority per member country. Once the Council has decided on how the 200 seats should be shared out, it will be the member States themselves that will designate the persons selected to hold a seat for each of the minorities at the CONEM. Mr Szajer justified his proposal by the fact that there is quite simply no institutional representation of minorities in the way the EU works. "There is a striking contradiction between the fact that, on one hand, the EU imposes very strict criteria on candidate countries concerning the protection of minorities (as a precondition for opening accession negotiations, in Europe Agreements, etc.) whereas, on the other hand, there is no legal or institutional base in the Union - except rather vague references in the Charter of Fundamental Rights or in the Treaty - to ensure application of these same rights in the Union itself", Mr Szajer said. The Vice-President of the Hungarian parliament felt that the Rom minority, because of its strong presence in all current and future EU Member States, should have between 30 and 40 seats at the CONEM.
Observers also note the large number of seats that would be held in this new committee by the Hungarian minority living in the neighbouring countries to Hungary, especially Slovakia and Romania.