The Impact of European Accession upon Language Policy in the Baltic States

Abstract

The deliberate changes to language regime undertaken in post-Soviet Estonia and Latvia have had significant repercussions for their accession to the EU and NATO. Charges of discrimination against Russian-speaking minorities have led countless European delegations to survey the Baltic States, resulting in a mixture of approval, advice and warnings on language, citizenship and integration issues. While these intervention shave been justified by assertions of international human rights standards, such standards as exist have been devised for very different minority situations, and their relevance to the Baltic States is often contested. The article points to an evolving critique of the minority-rights based approach of European institutions, and examines the specific sociolinguistic situation in the Baltic including the often unrecognized attitudes of the Russian-speaking minorities. The Baltic case has wider resonance for other small national languages seeking to reassert their status against former imperialistic language regimes.