AGSM Online Seminar 2020

20.11.2020

Actually, the 23rd Seminar of Slavic Minorities in Europe was supposed to take place in September of this year at the Molise-Croatians in the southeastern Italian region of Molise, but the new corona virus threw a spanner in the works, as it has for so many other events. The Slavic minorities from all over Europe agreed, however, that we should meet despite this, even if this is unfortunately only possible virtually at the moment.

Thus, on Thursday 19.11.2020 more than 25 representatives of Slavic minorities, experts and FUEN employees met at a first AGSM online seminar. AGSM spokesperson Angelika Mlinar opened the meeting and presented the agenda. Summarizing the year 2020, it could be noted that a very active year lies behind the AGSM. With the new brochure describing all Slavic members of the FUEN, the AGSM has done a very important public relations work. The brochure, which was also printed this year, should be translated into more Slavic languages in the future. Likewise, an important step towards more public presence has been the new AGSM web portal.

Éva A. Pénzes, Secretary General of FUEN, once again summarized the successful FUEN year 2020. Be it the hearing of the MSPI in the European Parliament or the numerous other projects and activities of FUEN, which had to take place mainly online. We all very much hope that we will soon again be able to connect and network with minorities through face-to-face events. 

AGSM members could report that they want to fight the times of the pandemic with a lot of commitment, motivation and creativity. Thus, some ideas have been shared that, despite the many restrictions, still show that minority members want to stay active. Some do this with online meetings, book exchanges, radio concerts, online theater plays, etc. During the meeting it was also unanimously decided that the seminar in 2021 will take place again as a face-to-face event in Molise, as far as it will be possible. 

At the meeting, Craig Willis, Junior Researcher at the European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI) also gave a keynote presentation on "The Minority SafePack initiative and an EU-wide basic income: a combination to address minority issues?". In his presentation, he refers to his Scientific Article, where he explores an introduction of the EU-wide Basic Income and the impact on the Minoritysafepack Initiative initiated by FUEN. According to his thesis, the introduction of a basic income could also have a positive impact on minority members (especially in rural areas). 

The virtual platform Voiceboxer offered an excellent opportunity to hold the seminar multilingually and thus enabled 4 languages (English, German, Russian and Croatian) with simultaneous interpreters. 

The AGSM would like to thank everyone for their participation! 

Unfortunately, not everyone can be seen on the group photo, but we would also like to thank those who cannot be seen on the photo! 

The event was sponsored by the Federal Ministry of the Interior, for Building and Community.