This collection of essays examines the legal regime in the post-Cold War era which has developed in response to the demands of ethnic, racial & religious groups in Europe. In essence this volume seeks to examine the 'old' problem of national minorities in the 'new' Europe. The essays examine the response of the main institutions within Europe (i.e. the Council of Europe, OSCE & European Union), the increasing recourse of states to bilateral arrangements, the developing content of minority rights, the challenges posed by state-building & the resolution of conflicts involving national minorities. Particular issues considered include the minorities situation in the Former Yugoslavia, the situation in Ukraine (in particular in Crimea), the position of the minority Catholic population in Northern Ireland, as well as developments in the context of autonomous regimes & power-sharing arrangements. At the end of the book, a collection of documents, which supplement these chapters & are relevant to minority rights in the 'New' Europe, can be found. Whilst the book's editors are both legal academics from the United Kingdom, the contributors' backgrounds are diverse & varied, originating from a number of different countries, with expertise in a wide variety of areas.

This book provides a comprehensive assessment of minority rights in Central and Eastern Europe, covering all the countries of the region that have joined the EU since 2004, including Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria.

A broad-ranging study that explores the complex relationship between ethnicity and democratization, focusing on specific case studies including France, Spain, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Russia, Albania and Hungary. Marrying the empirical and theoretical, the book begins by conceptualizing the nature of ethnicity and relating these ideas to different theories of democracy and democratization. The contributors locate ethnic experiences within a series of common frameworks to shed light on key issues such as: * the effect of democratization and authoritarian rule on ethnic tensions * the extent to which ethnicity is constructed as an ideological tool * whether democracy can only function if all citizens are fully assimilated.

"[O]rganised jointly by the Council of Europe and the Estonian authorities"--P. 9.

The question of minority rights - if minorities should enjoy group rights and if so what the concomitant responsibilities are - is one that lies at the center of the political debate in Europe.

The role of education.

This book examines whether we are moving towards an integrated regional system of legal provision for minorities. It illustrates the tension between newer member states, many of which have an interest in seeing minority issues addressed, and established members, which remain hesitant in committing themselves fully to a minority rights regime.

There are approximately ten million Roma in Europe, making them the continent’s largest non-territorial minority. Despite this fact, the Roma continue to experience routine discrimination and marginalization in European countries. As a result they are seldom engaged in national political activism and are frequently at the bottom of the economic and social ladder. The severity of exclusion experienced by the Roma in societies which have long paid heed to the notion of individual, universal human rights – combined with their geographical dispersal and heterogeneous nature – makes the study of the Roma highly informative. This book examines the theoretical debate concerning the most appropriate way of protecting the fundamental human rights of the Roma, which also illuminates ways in which the rights of minority groups can be protected more generally. As a result, this work will be a valuable resource for social scientists and practitioners in the field of human rights.

Human and Minority Rights Protection by Multiple Diversity Governance provides a comprehensive overview and critical analysis of minority protection through national constitutional law and international law in Europe. Using a critical theoretical and methodological approach, this textbook: provides a historical analysis of state formation and nation building in Europe with context of religious wars and political revolutions, including the (re-)conceptualisation of basic concepts and terms such as territoriality, sovereignty, state, nation and citizenship; deconstructs all primordial theories of ethnicity and provides a sociologically informed political theory for how to reconcile the functional prerequisites for political unity, legal equality and social cohesion with the preservation of cultural diversity; examines the liberal and nationalist ideological framing of minority protection in liberal-democratic regimes, including the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice; analyses the ongoing trend of re-nationalisation in all parts of Europe and the number of legal instruments and mechanisms from voting rights to proportional representation in state bodies, forms of cultural and territorial autonomy and federalism. This textbook will be essential reading for students, scholars and practitioners interested in European politics, human and minority rights, constitutional and international law, governance and nationalism. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

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