Renée Zellweger to be involved in the European Citizens’ Initiative?

Renée Zellweger’s mother, Kjellfrid Irene is Norwegian of Kven and Sámi descent. Therefore, supporters have reached out to her, asking her to become involved in the European Citizens’ Initiative on protecting national regions.

The European Citizens’ Initiative on protecting national regions launched on May 7 last year, and it aims to ensure that the EU takes into consideration the ethnic characteristics of regions when distributing cohesion funds.

The initiative for the Equality of the Regions and Sustainability of the Regional Cultures aims to convince the European Commission to create a cohesion policy that pays special attention to regions with national, ethnic, cultural, religious or linguistic characteristics that are different from those of the surrounding regions.

The proposal has symbolic weight, too, given the declaration of the year of national cohesion 100 years after the signing of the Trianon Peace Treaty. The proposed resolution states that the deprivations of such regions, including geographical areas without administrative powers, can be addressed by ensuring equal access to structural funds and other EU funds, resources, and programmes while promoting their regional identity.

One million signatures were collected by the end of May. However, the compulsory limit was reached only in three countries: Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. They would need the statutory limit in another four countries at least. Luckily, the European Union approved a later deadline for the petition due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, and they can collect signatures until 7 November.