This book provides a critical evaluation of the ways in which EU law engages with minority rights protection: at its core is an analysis of EU law and minority rights. Unlike the UN or ECHR, the EU has no competence to set standards on minority protection and this has been a point of disappointment for minority rights advocates. Indeed, this book will demonstrate that, in EU law, binding standards really only exist in the sphere of non-discrimination and are at their strongest in the field of employment. As such, binding standards within EU law affect only a small proportion of the canon of minority rights. However, the EU does have competence to promote diversity and facilitate redistribution of power and resources across the EU. According to a broad understanding of minority rights protection, acts of promotion and facilitation -alongside those of standard-setting - constitute essential underpinnings for minority protection. The EU's existing competences do therefore play a key role in minority protection. In order to support these conclusions, the book undertakes a comprehensive examination of the impact of EU law on minority rights protection. The book examines a broad range of the EU's legal provisions and principles which may affect minority protection, before undertaking in-depth analyses of the examples of minority cultural rights and minority linguistic rights. In addition, the final substantive chapter of the book contextualises the impact of EU law within the perspective of the overall needs of a specific group - the Roma minority. The concluding chapter draws together the EU's contribution to minority rights. In short, the EU can be seen as a promoter, but not a protector, of minority rights. Although not ideal, especially from the perspective of minorities, it is worth at least exploring such a view. Such an exploration would enable the EU most easily to build upon its existing competences and regulatory capacities. This book will be of interest to lawyers and activists concerned with minority rights and Roma rights protection within the EU. It will also be of relevance to those interested in understanding the dynamics between the EU and the international law community in overlapping areas of rights protection, and exploring how this informs our perception of the capacity of the EU to be a central actor in the field of rights protection.

In A Dialogical Concept of Minority Rights, Hanna H. Wei demonstrates that a more plausible and realistic concept of minority rights should consist of not only rights against the state but also rights against the group. She formulates and defends three separate but related rights to dialogue, and thoroughly analyses how they may operate not only to maintain a healthy balance between the minorities’ need to be culturally distinct and their need to relate to and belong in the larger society, but also that they address the generalisations and presuppositions on which the debate of multiculturalism has been based, and constitute the first step of a possible solution to many of the theoretical and practical difficulties of minority protection.

Human and Minority Rights Protection by Multiple Diversity Governance provides a comprehensive overview and critical analysis of minority protection through national constitutional law and international law in Europe. Using a critical theoretical and methodological approach, this textbook: provides a historical analysis of state formation and nation building in Europe with context of religious wars and political revolutions, including the (re-)conceptualisation of basic concepts and terms such as territoriality, sovereignty, state, nation and citizenship; deconstructs all primordial theories of ethnicity and provides a sociologically informed political theory for how to reconcile the functional prerequisites for political unity, legal equality and social cohesion with the preservation of cultural diversity; examines the liberal and nationalist ideological framing of minority protection in liberal-democratic regimes, including the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice; analyses the ongoing trend of re-nationalisation in all parts of Europe and the number of legal instruments and mechanisms from voting rights to proportional representation in state bodies, forms of cultural and territorial autonomy and federalism. This textbook will be essential reading for students, scholars and practitioners interested in European politics, human and minority rights, constitutional and international law, governance and nationalism. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

Minorities have been part of European history and politics since the middle of the 16th Century, often seen as obstacles to state-building and later as a threat to nation-building. Traditional minorities have had to fight their own way to be able to remain in their homelands, while new arrivals have been met with rejection and were expected to return home. Minorities are still seen as a threat to peace and security and mostly as outsiders. In the early 21st Century of inter-connected societies, minorities are more than ever an issue often seen as a threat to social cohesion. This book provides the advanced student with a multi-disciplinary, informed perspective on minority history and politics as well as social and cultural issues related to minority identity and minority existence in Europe.

This timely Research Handbook provides a multidisciplinary overview of research on ethno-cultural minority issues at the supranational level of the EU. It delivers a state-of-the-art review of the EU’s approaches to development and institutional implementation of minority policies from the Treaty of Rome until today.

This book provides a comprehensive assessment of minority rights in Central and Eastern Europe, covering all the countries of the region that have joined the EU since 2004, including Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria.

This book explores how the European Union has been responding to the challenge of diversity. In doing so, it considers the EU as a complex polity that has found novel ways for accommodating diversity. Much of the literature on the EU seeks to identify it as a unique case of cooperation between states that moves past classic international cooperation. This volume argues that in order to understand the EU’s effort in managing the diversity among its members and citizens it is more effective to look at the EU as a state. While acknowledging that the EU lacks key aspects of statehood, the authors show that looking at the EU efforts to balance diversity and unity through the lens of state policy is a fruitful way to understand the Union. Instead of conceptualising the EU as being incomparable and unique which is neither an international organisation nor a state, the book argues that EU can be understood as a polity that shares many approaches and strategies with complex and diverse states. As such, its effort to build political structures to accommodate diversity offers lessons to other such polities. The experience of the EU contributes to the understanding of how states and other polities can respond to challenges of diversity, including both the diversity of constituent units or of sub-national groups and identities.

Examines the development and the role of human rights in the European Union, arguing that human rights have become an important component of the foreign policy of the European Union. This book analyses the EU's policy on minorities, as a particular example of human rights.

The interest in minority protection emerged during the period of democratic transition, particularly of ethnically segmented postcommunist societies after the end of the Cold War. Minority issues became prominent as postcommunist states lined up as potential candidates for EU membership and the respect for and protection of minority rights was an essential part of criteria these states had to fulfil before EU accession. Minority rights protection has constituted an important ‘gatekeeping’ criterion for EU membership. Its monitoring remains a powerful instrument to mediate tensions and to adjudicate discriminations in the present-day Europe. In many countries, minority rights standards have been transposed in domestic legislation, but whether these norms constitute a legitimate background which states accept, sustain and promote is the focus of this book. This volume takes on the task of analysing the diffusion of minority rights norms across the European continent. It looks specifically at the oft-neglected process of compliance meaning not only the formal adoption of European laws but also their implementation within the domestic context. The contributions analyse the political rhetoric, legal transposition and behavioural compliance in a range of European states, East and West, to assess compliance to norms of minority protection. This book was published as a special issue of Perspectives on European Politics and Society.

This edited collection brings together distinguished scholars across a range of academic disciplines to explore how the European Union engages with culture. The book examines the ways in which cultural issues have been framed at the EU level and the policies and instruments to which they have given vent.