Abstract
The Minority Safepack Initiative was first launched in 2012, and has since had a relatively turbulent history. It was first rejected by the European Commission which refused to register the Initiative in 2013, as it claimed that some of the proposed contents were out of EU competence. The authors appealed the refusal, and the General Court annulled the Commission decision in February 2017. In March 2017, the Commission decided that the collection of signatures could be launched; it lasted until April 3, 2018 and reached the thresholds for European Citizen’s Initiatives with 1,128,385 validated signatures in 11 EU member-states – a remarkable success, as only four previous Citizen’s Initiatives had also managed to meet the criteria. An Expert Group has now been established to form working groups drafting proposals on how to put the Minority Safepack Initiative’s contents into practice. The present paper evaluates the European Citizen’s Initiative as an instrument to ensure political participation, looks at the connection between diversity, identity and political participation, and discusses the Minority Safepack Initiative’s role in fostering ‘bottom-up’ Europeanization and civil society collaboration. It traces the development of the Initiative from its beginning until July 2019, and provides an outlook on the next steps towards implementation.