European Citizens’ Initiatives for the Protection and Promotion of Rights and Interests of National Minorities - Latest Developments (original) (raw)

Péter Varga -Balázs Tárnok: European Citizens' Initiatives for the Protection of National Minorities

Hungarian Journal of Minority Studies, 2019

The European Citizens' Initiative entered into force in 2012 as a new instrument of participatory democracy in the EU. It was inspired by national constitutional developments, and it was introduced into eu law with the Lisbon Treaty. The new legal tool proved to be attractive for citizens' committees that had been formed by members of organizations dedicated to the protection and promotion of the rights of national minorities. This paper discusses the content, fate, and legal impact of the two European Citizens' Initiatives that have been proposed in the area of the protection of national minorities.

The European Union and the protection of minorities: new dynamism via the European Citizens Initiative, in European Journal of Minority Studies, Vol 11 No3-4 2018, p. 362-391

This article looks into the current and potential role of the European Union in the context of minority rights. It briefl y shows how the topic of minority rights entered the stage of EU law and politics and how the legal competencies in the context of diversity management are distributed between the EU and national levels. The core of the contribution is dedicated to the role of the European Citizen Initiative (ECI) -an EU law instrument introduced by the treaty of Lisbon at the end of 2009. The experience with this tool of democratic participation over the last years reveals promising potential, but also sobering hurdles. Two case studies are presented in more detail to illustrate these two sides of the ECI.

The Protection of National Minorities within the Council of Europe: An Analytical Review

Kathmandu School of Law Review

According to the preamble of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, which has entered into force on 1 February 1998, minority rights are an integral part of fundamental human rights. This instrument is the ever legally binding treaty in the regional and also universal level that taken on great importance in addressing the challenges of minority protection in evolving and increasingly diverse societies. So, this paper has an analytical approach to the protection of minorities within the Council of Europe and for this, especially, focuses on the Framework Convention: namely its content, its rights-holders, and also- the most important point of view - the problems, challenges and tasks that this legally instrument faces with it in practice. One must take into account that the Framework Convention has passed 13 years of its birth and the authors aim to analyse its achievements and in the same time, its challenges as well. Thus, we reiterate once more that ou...

Minorities rights in European Union (EU)

The purpose of this overview is to highlight the developmenets in minorities rights in European Union (EU)before and after Treaty of Lisbon signed by 2007 .The scholarly literature overview is the main tools in this essay, since it may contribute to the overall understanding of minortities, peculiarities of their ethnic and social development.The study will also attempt to investigate the EU contirbute and achivemnets about the minorities situations and possible challenges that follow. Consequently, the following research questions has presented about the minority rights in Central and Eastern Europe been a success or a failure of the EU conditionality and the main importance’s of the Lisbon Treaty and post Lisbon treaty in promoting the minorities rights in the EU. In conclusion for promoting the minorities rights values on the EU the influence of the EU on the domestic policies of candidate states can be usefully divided into ‘active’ and ‘passive’ leverage, while ‘passive leverage’ outcomes from the desirability of EU membership and is not linked to any deliberate policies of the EU, ‘active leverage’ results from the cautious use of EU rules and conditionality but EU membership can be use as leverage. The EU and the United Nations should be at the forefront in ensuring minorities rights are equally practised to allmembers of the states under the organizations. This includes the adoption of multiculturalism and territorial autonomy to the minority groups within a given country.

KSI Transactions on K N O W L E D Minority Rights: Political principles and Legal codification (development of European minority protection system in the 90s)

The end of the Cold war came along with re-surgent (ethno)national and minority controversies within and among the states of CEE. The increasing focus on the issues of rights reflects the upward tendency towards their legal codification. The criticism against the minority protection system includes the following points: documents concerning minority protection have only political but no legal force, legal state obligations are too vaguely formulated , the group dimension is not sufficiently recognized. The legally entrenched norms and rights are but a part of a whole system, which covers also political principle, enforcement , and monitoring principles and political practices .

European Minorities Win a Battle in Luxembourg – The Judgment of the General Court in the Case Minority SafePack European Citizens' Initiative

The Lisbon Treaty introduced the European Citizens' Initiative (ECI), a brand new tool of transnational participatory democracy aiming to bring Europe closer to the people. Five years after the first ECI was lodged, we have yet to see an ECI that would pass the full procedure and end up as a proposal for a legal act. The European Commission (hereinafter: Commission) refused to register almost one third of the initiatives lodged on the basis that they fall manifestly outside the framework of the Commission's powers to submit a proposal for a legal act. The organizers of the refused Minority SafePack ECI challenged the Commission's decision before the Court of Justice of the European Union. The General Court approved the claims of the organizers of an ECI for the first time in this case. The General Court's findings with regard to the Commission's duty to give proper reasoning with respect to the refusal of an ECI may be a small but important step in achieving the goals of the ECI.

Expecting Too Much: European Union's Minority Protection Hide-and-Seek

1 Anti-Discrimination Law Review, 2017, pp. 1–52.

EU's deference to the Member State approaches in minority protection can intensify the oppression of the vulnerable groups; its insistence on non-discrimination on the basis of nationality in the minority regions with special rights in place can equally produce injustice. Its inability to protect EU-wide minorities, like the Roma, is equally problematic. Although a 'value', with regard to many minority groups minority protection in the EU functions incoherently, if at all. It is time to recognise this and approach the EU as a highly specific minority protection arena not to be confused with its component parts – the Member States. The reform of the Member State-centred thinking should start at the level of approaching the core issues. It should include the assessment of such questions as what is a minority in the EU's context of a missing majority, what is the appropriate depth of EU's intervention in the area of minority protection, i.e. how much room for manoeuvre should reasonably be left with the Member States without disrupting the effectiveness of EU's regulation, as well as the approach to defining what a success in minority protection should be, in the EU context. The latter should be done, in particular, with due regard to the division of competences between the EU and the Member States in this and other relevant fields. This paper briefly explores a series of diverse case-studies – from migrant EU citizens, Baltic Russians, and sexual minorities to, most importantly, Roma rights to make the first attempt to test the proposed synergetic approach.