Secondly, South Tyrol’s autonomy arrangement is designed to regulate the balance of power between the language groups with language equality measures, reserved positions, executive proportionality, public service employment proportionality and public funding proportionality. This guarantees that the language groups are represented according to their numerical strength on a political level but also in public administration, and this is crucial for a peaceful coexistence. Finally, we also have financial autonomy, which is key to implement and execute the autonomous powers. Due to long negotiations, South Tyrol managed that almost 90 % of the taxes paid in South Tyrol, remain in South Tyrol. Of course, also today, our autonomy demands constant negotiations with Rome. Autonomy and minority protection in that sense is a ‘never-ending story’ and political negotiations are and always will be key for South Tyrol. Next year we celebrate the 50-years-jubilee of the Second Autonomy Statute, and more than ever, we sense, as one of the best protected minorities in Europe, that we also have to support other minorities to achieve similar things. In that regard I would like to remember the Bolzano-Bozen Declaration in 2004, which was addressed to all EU member states and the European Commission. With the accession of new member states from Central and Eastern European countries in the year 2004, minority protection became more crucial for the European Union. Also, the Bolzano-Bolzano recommendations from 2008, which are a set of recommendations on national minorities in inter-state relations by the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities show the importance of interstate diplomacy and bilateral agreements, as it was the case in South Tyrol’s history. Let me finish by saying that South Tyrol’s model is far from perfect and it needs to be further developed and adapted to new challenges of our times. But, we are also aware that our autonomy has worked out to pacify a conflict successfully and the last 50 years have shown that the autonomy has given us the tools to develop our territory, economically and socially. South Tyrol is a living example for effective conflict resolution and we are doing our best to share this knowledge and experience within the EU and worldwide. Our wish is that we might be able to contribute that other states and minorities are able to coexist peacefully.