On 3 September 2025, the European Commission informed us that it did not intend to take any further action regarding the European Citizens’ Initiative entitled “Cohesion Policy for the Equality of the Regions and Sustainability of the Regional Cultures.” We challenged that decision before the General Court of the European Union. We have now submitted our reply to the Commission’s defence and continue to fully maintain our action in its entirety.
The Commission’s conduct breached, on several counts, the requirements of good administration, transparent reasoning, and genuine democratic participation.
We consider the Commission’s substantive arguments to be legally flawed. Our initiative does not call for general minority-protection legislation from the European Union, nor does it seek to alter the administrative structures of the Member States. What we ask is that EU cohesion policy take into account those specific historical, cultural, linguistic and demographic factors that place certain regions at a lasting economic disadvantage. This is clearly a matter that falls within the scope of cohesion policy.
We find it unacceptable that the Commission sent the organisers the questions for the hearing of 25 March 2025 only a few days in advance. In such a complex case, ongoing for years, this did not allow for meaningful, properly prepared and genuinely interactive dialogue. As a result, the oral hearing was emptied of substance and lost its true purpose.
We also consider it a serious problem that, in its Communication, the Commission claimed that it had no evidence supporting the economic and demographic disadvantages of national regions. In fact, during the procedure we submitted specific written materials, economic analyses and data. In its current defence, the Commission no longer refers to a lack of evidence, but instead claims that the evidence was outdated and of limited scope. In our view, this is an ex post justification that cannot remedy the shortcomings of the contested Communication.
We are convinced that if the Commission considered the submitted data insufficient, it had a duty to state this clearly during the procedure, to provide an opportunity for the evidence to be supplemented, and to carry out a more thorough examination itself using its own institutional tools — for example, by relying on EU statistical sources. Instead, the Commission remained passive and, in the end, simply invoked a lack of evidence.
We also find it contradictory that the Commission accepts a targeted EU approach for certain regions with specific territorial characteristics, while rejecting the same approach in the case of national regions. It is equally contradictory that the Commission invokes fundamental rights and non-discrimination when dealing with the use of cohesion funds, yet suddenly pleads lack of competence when the implications of those same principles should be applied to the situation of national regions.
We believe that the European Citizens’ Initiative can fulfil its democratic role only if proposals supported by more than one million European citizens are examined by the European Commission in an open, careful and substantive manner. In this case, the Commission failed to meet that requirement.
We will continue to work so that the cause of national regions cannot be swept aside by formalistic or political arguments. We ask the General Court to declare that the Commission’s decision was unlawful and to annul it.
The issue of national regions is not a closed matter. It remains a European issue: one of equality, fairness, cohesion, and the survival of regional cultures.
Târgu Mureș, 17 April 2026
Balázs Izsák
President of the Székely National Council
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