Minority protection in Europe: “a great paradox”

europarl.europa.eu
Penki news, Lithuania
February 5

MEPs believe “the right to speak and to be educated in one's mother tongue is one of the most basic fundamental rights” and on Tuesday Hungarian Socialist Csaba Tabajdi and five other MEPs grilled the Commission on its plans to protect traditional national, ethnic and immigrant minorities in Europe. We asked him more. Mr Tabajdi heads the Parliament's national minority Intergroup, which has previously sponsored an EP resolution seeking to set the distinction between national and indigenous and ethnic/ migrant minorities. How do the needs of traditional and ethnic minorities differ from those of immigrant ones? About 8% of Europe's population belongs to indigenous and 6.5% to immigrant minorities - the latter mainly in Western Europe. The difference is not in fundamental human liberties, as they must be ensured for all. The state should support indigenous or traditional ethnic minorities – who have been living on their territories for centuries – in their aspirations to preserve their mother tongue, culture, identity. (They should also speak the majority language of course.) In the case of immigrant minorities the state's obligation is different: it should help them integrate into society and learn the language of the host country. Earlier you said: “Europe has always rewarded those minorities, which employ violence, instead of those using peaceful, constitutional means.” These are the facts. There are very few examples to the contrary - perhaps Swedish-speaking Finns. It does not however mean that I'd be in favour of violence. I believe that those minorities should be rewarded for their rights who have always fought by constitutional and peaceful means. Yet autonomy for some national minorities remains a taboo. This is one of the great paradoxes of minority protection in Europe. At present, there is no legally binding system at EU level protecting traditional national minorities in Europe. Should there be one? There is and there is not a European system of minority protection. In 1993, the European Council in Copenhagen set minority protection as one of the selection criteria for applicants to meet before they join...In other words, the 12 new members were required to meet the minority protection criteria, but the old members have not applied these to themselves. If France or Greece sought admission to the EU today, they would not be accepted since neither has ratified the Council of Europe's two binding documents, which had to be ratified by all 12 newer Member States: the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. There is not a single reference to the existence of national minorities in the 80,000-page EU legislation: that's why the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty would be so important. It would for the first time provide a legally binding basis for the protection of minorities at EU level.