Minderheiten und Recht. Eine Einführung am Beispiel Österreichs

Abstract

In terms of law, a (ethnic or national) minority is usually defined as a group of state nationals in a (numerically) non-dominant position with ethnic, religious or linguistic characteristics and the intention to preserve these. In order to achieve this goal, minority rights on the one hand should protect minorities against any kind of discrimination and on the other hand support them in order to achieve effective equal treatment. Following law's hierarchical structure, minority rights can be found at different levels: International law – as for example the two UN-covenants or several specific treaties on minority protection in other international or regional organizations – serves as an important source for minority rights. Minority rights are usually listed among (individual) human rights, mostly ignoring their specific character also including group rights. The EU has no competence for dealing with minority issues, so this is generally no part of Community law, although the EU considers minority rights as an important part of its foreign policy. At the national level, most minority rights have – at least in the case of Austria – constitutional status. They include the special prohibition of discrimination, the right to use minority languages in legal proceedings as well as special bilingual topographic signs and bilingual education at school, with more detailed provisions in administrative law. In most European countries, minorities have, moreover, special privileges in the democratic process, including minority representatives or special voting procedures. Also civil law is indirectly determined by minority rights, insofar as, for example, discriminating clauses in contracts can be contested before civil courts and the Austrian penal code punishes aggressive campaigning against ethnic minorities as well as genocide. Although law cannot prevent all sorts of prejudices and social or economic discrimination of minorities, it is nevertheless very important to protect these groups against discrimination by the state as well as by private persons and to preserve their characteristics.