The Use and Abuse of Minority Rights: Assessing Past and Future EU Policies towards Accession Countries of Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe

Abstract

With the exception of Belarus and Russia, all Central-East, South-East, and East European countries (CSEECs) have expressed their desire to join the European Union. Eight countries from the region joined the EU in 2004, Romania and Bulgaria will almost certainly join in 2007, while another seven are currently under consideration. As those seven future-accession CSEECs strive for membership, their governments increasingly look toward directives from the EU to adjust domestic policies; minority rights continue to play a key role in this process. The issue of protecting minorities has received a great deal of attention since 1989, and was one of a select few accession criteria made explicit by the EU in 1993. Since that period, many policy-makers and academics have begun taking a closer look at this politically sensitive area. Nevertheless, minority protection has been and remains shrouded in confusion and misunderstanding: Slovakia’s education minister was baffled in the 1990s by international criticisms of an education policy that resembled that of Ireland and Spain, or Estonian citizens exasperated by international criticisms of their citizenship laws which they deem more liberal than that of Germany, to name just two examples. This article seeks to clarify what is meant by the phrase ‘protection of minorities’ and to explore the EU’s commitment to this International Journal on Minority and Group Rights 13: 27–51, 2006. 27 © Koninklijke Brill NV. Printed in the Netherlands.