National Regions Initiative Closes with Support from Nine Countries With more than 6,000 signatures having arrived by Saturday night, Latvia is the ninth country to meet the required threshold for the Szekler National Council’s (SZNT) national regions initiative, reports SZNT. With all requirements being met by the February 7 deadline, the issue will now be considered by the European Parliament. SZNT’s initiative for the protection of ethnic regions in the European Union required at least one million signatures total, and signature minimums to be met in at least seven EU member states. In their Saturday night Facebook post, SZNT thanked the Latvian Russian Union party and its two co-presidents, Tatjana Ždanoka and Miroslav Mitrofanov, for helping spread the movement around Latvia’s Russian minority.