Minority Rights and Minority Protection in Europe

• Published date: 18 September 2017
• Pages: 692-696
• Date: 18 September 2017
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-05-2017-0113
• Author: Thomas Köllen
• Subject Matter: HR & organizational behaviour,Employment law,Diversity, equality, inclusion

Book review

Minority Rights and Minority Protection in Europe

By Timofey Agarin and Karl Cordell

Rowman & Littlefield

London

2016

Keywords European minority rights regime, European Union,

Post-communist nations, Nation-building, EU’s eastward enlargement,

Romaphobia, Ethnic identities

Review DOI 10.1108/EDI-05-2017-0113

In recent years, the “European project”has experienced considerable headwind

(Hussain, 2017). In 1992 the members of the European Community signed the Treaty on

European Union in the Dutch city of Maastricht. As stated in the first sentence of the

preamble, the undersigned parties “resolved to mark a new stage in the process of

European integration undertaken with the establishment of the European Communities”

(EUR-Lex, 1992). The question of what the final stage of European integration would look

like was, however, left open. Up until that point, the tacit shared consensus had been that

the European Union was heading toward establishing some kinds of European citizenship,

in order to foster peace and stability in Europe, whether this citizenship would be based on

the concept of a United States of Europe, a Federal Union, or any other integrated system

of government.

It is often stated that having started the process of the EU’s eastward enlargement, and

having agreed on the accession of 11 post-communist states from Eastern and Central

Europe (in 2004, 2007, and 2013), the “old”member states, intentionally or unintentionally,

moved away from the idea of striving for a political union (Eder and Spohn, 2005).

Euroscepticism and tendencies of re-nationalization (Köllen, 2012) are increasingly

noticeable, even in these “old”member states, exemplified by the UK’splanned

withdrawal from the European Union (Brexit), or the rise of nationalist and anti-European

parties setting agendas in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, and Finland, amongst

others. However, the unwillingness of ceding national sovereignty to “Brussels”in the

post-communist states is different in its shape and its intensity. A crucial field where the

underlying differences in framing national identities, citizenship, statehood, and

belonging is expressed, is the state’s way of dealing with ethnic or national minorities

living on their national territory.

With their book Minority Rights and Minority Protection in Europe, the editors

Timofey Agarin and Karl Cordell offer a new perspective on understanding the differences

between the “new”and the “old”member states. Their work paves the way for a new

research stream on understanding the reluctance of post-communist member states to

adhere to the European minority rights regime. This question is embedded in the more

general issue of understanding the “concern by the resident majorities about their privileged

access to services and institutions of the state which they ‘own’, including their right to veto

decisions, taking away their advantageous, if not outright privileged, position in the

domestic decision-making process”(p. 153).

The issues addressed in Agarin and Cordell’s book are not only highly topical with

regard to the ongoing practices of undermining and diluting the “Brussels consensus,”in

terms of minority rights in the new member states of the EU. Rather, the book’s topicality

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:

An International Journal

Vol. 36 No. 7, 2017

pp. 692-696

© Emerald PublishingLimited

2040-7149

692

EDI

36,7