Amid the turmoil of the German elections, which saw the rise of the Alternative fur Deutschland (Afd) - a party with explicitly neo-Nazi elements - to 20%, the SSW's historic result passed (almost) unnoticed.
The SSW (Südschleswigscher Wählerverband), the autonomous party representing the Danish minority in Germany and active in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, achieved a historic high of 76,126 votes.
For the second time in a row, the SSW managed to elect its own candidate to the Bundestag.
This means that a party that was founded to represent the Danish minority in Germany (about 50,000 people) and to promote cultural and linguistic diversity, manages to get 4% in the state and enough votes to have a representative in Berlin!
The two leading candidates were the elected Stefan Seidler and our colleague and president of the board of the European Free Alliance Youth: Maylis Roßerg.
I want to mention Maylis because she has put forward two very important candidacies in the space of a year:
Last year, in the European elections, she was the leading candidate of the European Free Alliance, and this led her to spend months travelling and working in Europe in order to run - I remind you - for the presidency of the European Commission (Ursula’s seat).
While this year she played the leading role in the SSW's duet of candidates in the Bundestag, obtaining, as mentioned, the historic record of votes and, for a few thousand preferences, the seat that would have allowed her to enter the German Parliament was not released.
I would like to remind you of one thing: Maylis Roßerg is 24 years old.
And at 24 she is fighting for Europe, for the Europe of linguistic and cultural diversity, for the Europe of decarbonisation and renewable energies, for the Europe of the peoples, for the Europe of the regions and not of the States that have failed to represent us.
She works for so many of those values that in 1957 made possible the establishment of the EEC, which in 1992 resulted in the European Union: the highest democratic system in the world.
She does so as a Dane in Germany, she does so as a convinced autonomist, she does so as a convinced pro-European.
Let us not forget that we Friulians also have a language that the State should protect through the Constitution, an history, a culture and a geographical position that places us in the centre of Europe.
Every minority that composes Europe has its own values, singularities and richnesses.
We have the right and the duty to demand representation, to demand a role and a place in the future of the European Union; that if it is capable of reforming, it will do so thanks to multicultural regions like Friuli, like Schleswig, like Catalonia, like Brittany, like Alsace... the list is very long.
We have the right and the duty to demand representation, especially today, when the EU is being put to the test by those populisms and nationalisms that killed millions of people 80 years ago and that today try to tell us that we might be even better off without the EU (ps. Italy, as an example, would go into default!).
Thanks to the SSW, which continues to show how politics and representation can be done from the bottom up, Patto are working and will continue to work with you;
and to Maylis, who proves that age is just a number and that it is our generation that has to change things, that has to give a new paradigm.