Kadonnutta vaikutusvaltaa etsimässä : EU:n vähemmistöpoliittinen toimijuus laajentumisen jälkeen

Kirjoittajat

• Matti Jutila

Abstrakti

With its Copenhagen criteria for eastern enlargement, the EU became to be seen as an important player in European minority politics. For many Central and Eastern European states, EU membership offered the necessary incentive to change their policies to more minority sensitive direction. This article investigates the limitations of those incentives and discusses how the ”security-track” of the minority system should be reorganized if the EU wants to remain an important minority political actor in post-enlargement Europe. The article first shows how the security-track operated through cooperation between the EU, Council of Europe and OSCE, using international pressure on Latvia to amend its citizenship legislation in 1998 as an illustrative example. With the case of mass evictions and expulsions of Eastern European Roma from France in 2010 the article shows the problems facing international governance of minority rights today. The article concludes with a discussion on possible reforms to the security-track of European minority rights system, proposing increased roles for the Council of Europe and the European Parliament.