Treatises and Documents, Journal for Ethnic Studies, 2014

The European Union (EU) paid considerable attention to national minorities after the Cold War when it used minority protection as a criterion for recognition of new states and EU membership – i.e., in a limited area of Central and Eastern Europe (and in South Europe), as a criterion for states from this region to participate in European integration. The EU has used minority protection as a matter of good governance of new states and states wishing to join the EU. The candidates were subject to Europeanisation when they were expected to adopt certain minority standards in order to prove that they adhere to European norms and values. This paper analyses what has happened with respect to the objective of minority protection in the decade after the 2004 enlargement. It demonstrates that this Europeanisation has been limited at best and that it has not led to notable changes in actual behaviour towards national minorities. This is due not only to intra-EU structural issues, but also due to how Europeanisation was carried out.

Minority rights protection has been one of the significant litmus tests for the success of EU conditionality. In Romania, the accession process helped transform key minority policies and improved the records whereas in Turkey, the traditional minority policies still linger despite the small changes in early 2000s. This paper aims to analyze how EU conditionality in minority related policies has become successful in Romania but not in Turkey through the application of the external incentives model to the cases to see under which circumstances minority rights measures were adopted and refused. The model assumes that the EU conditionality can be expected to improve minority conditions when the credibility of conditionality is higher, the conditions are determinate and the domestic adoption costs are lower in target states. Therefore, the paper attempts to test this model’s assumptions and expectations within the cases of Romania and Turkey. The paper argues that although the veto players and domestic adoption costs primarily determine the success of EU conditionality in minority rights in target states, the EU conditionality can, to an extent, undermine the power of resistant political forces by credible membership prospect and clear conditions.

Minority rights conditionality has been seen by scholars as a key part of the EU enlargement process. While the focus on minority rights has largely been discussed in terms of democracy and even human rights, this article argues that conditionality was a result of the securitization of minorities rather than an agenda to protect or empower. In this paper, we look at the minority rights conditionality through the prisms of security, democracy and regional integration and examine how these narratives have been shaped by European organizations. In response to the conclusions of Paul Roe about the inability to desecuritize societal security, we look at whether these organizations have the ability to change the societal dynamics to make the desecuritization of societal security more likely to occur. Overall, we illustrate how the focus on regional stability has linked both democracy and regional integration to the securitization of minorities reinforcing a status quo rather than a mandate for protect and empowerment. The resulting conclusion is further evidence of the inability to desecuritize societal security.

The norm of minority protection is often singled out as a prime example of the political impact of European Union (EU) conditionality on the ethnically diverse states of Central and Eastern Europe. The EU's 'minority condition' is best understood as a political and social construct rooted in European security concerns. As such, it has had very 'real' effects, both intended and unintended, and direct and indirect. This article extends the study of EU conditionality by including the post-accession period, and by concentrating on the politics surrounding conditionality. As the cases of Latvia and Estonia demonstrate, high-intensity EU involvement during the accession process did generate a rationalist momentum for legislative change, and formal compliance gave rise to a perception of behavioural change. However, socialization effects can point in the opposite direction of the rationalist momentum that informs formal legal change and thereby 'lock in' deeper structural problems and contradictory behavioural trends.

J. Eur. Integration

This article examines whether there exists a genuine link between different sorts of "minorities" and the European Union which would legitimise talk of minorities "of" rather than "within" the European Union. The author examines the cases of the member states themselves, EU migrant workers, third country nationals and traditional minorities within the member states. Whereas migrant workers and the member states hardly constitute such "community minorities", third country nationals do. Regarding the traditional minorities the author doubts that the Union will ever assume a full fledged competence in this field which would establish a direct link between the minorities and the Union thereby bypassing the national level. He even portrays such a development as legally unconvincing. This, however, does not pre-empt the Union from developing a policy in the field of minority protection. In the conclusions the author hints to some possible developments in this direction.

2006

Minority rights have been a paradoxical issue during the EU's eastward enlargement. While 'the respect for and protection of national minorities' was enshrined in the first Copenhagen criterion and is often singled out as a prime example of the EU's positive stabilising impact in CEE, the EU has in fact promoted norms which lack a foundation in EU law and remain controversial in the Member States. This paper will analyse the effectiveness of the 'minority condition' during the accession process and point towards some trends in the development of minority policies after accession. The inclusion of the post-accession period allows us to distinguish between short-term and long-term adjustments. Ultimately, only long-term policy diffusion, institutional adaptation and a change in underlying norms would testify to a lasting impact of the EU. The paper treats minority rights as political rights and distinguishes between the right to national autonomy (e.g. Hungary), the right to citizenship (e.g. Latvia) and the right to political participation (e.g. Slovakia, Bulgaria). Conceptually and empirically, these cases help us to disentangle the international and domestic conditions of effective minority policy, the rationale behind EU involvement, and the scope and limitations of EU conditionality.

2009

This paper conducts a multi-value Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) of the formal adoption and sustainability of minority protection rules in four new EU member states (Poland, Romania, Estonia, Latvia) over a twelve-year period including pre- and post-accession phases (1997-2008) and five minority protection related issue areas (non-discrimination, language use, education, citizenship, integration of Roma) based on four conditions (external incentives, government position, veto players, size of minorities), in order to investigate under which external and domestic conditions minority protection and non-discrimination measures are adopted, maintained or revoked in new member states before and after accession to the EU.