mr president the european union has no jurisdiction as far as the status of national minorities in the member states is concerned
there is no problem however because all european union member states are also members of the council of europe an organisation which is well-equipped and well-experienced to address that issue
to duplicate the activity of the council of europe would be detrimental to the scope of our work on minorities and would only create confusion and frustration
secondly i am concerned to see that our approach on minorities places too much emphasis on solutions that were perhaps valid decades and centuries ago
i believe that in this field as well it would be better to develop our imagination more than our memory
finally instead of revisiting fields already explored the european union would be better advised to develop a concept of transnational protection of cultural rights in a continent where each ethno-cultural community is a minority as well
