Practice of Minority Protection in Central Europe

The aim of the project

The purpose of the project is to comparatively study the implementation of legal provisions for the protection of minorities in Austria, Italy, Slovenia, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania with the aim, on the one hand, to identity gaps in the implementation and, on the other hand, assess the impact that the implementation of legal provisions has had on the interethnic living together, the mutual trust, the functioning of institutions and the interstate relations. This should shed light on which influence an adequate minority protection system can have on the internal and external stability, economic prosperity and the lived cultural diversity within a state. The project thus aims at identifying best practice of minority protection, while at the same time studying, under which condition certain practices can function and under which circumstances the application of certain measures may have detrimental affect on the interethnic living together.

The project partners

The project is scientifically coordinated by Prof. Joseph Marko who leads a team of lawyers, political scientists, sociologists, economists and historians from the following institutions:

• Competence Centre of South Eastern Europe at the Karl-Franzens-University Graz (Austria), project leader

• European Academy Bolzano/Bozen (Italy)

• Institute foe Ethnic Studies (Slovenia)

• Center for the Research of Ethnicity and Culture (Slovakia)

• Terra Recognita Foundation (Hungary)

In a preparatory phase, the team elaborates legal country studies, analyzing the national legal framework for the protection of national minorities in the countries involved. These studies are followed by a comparative legal analysis. In the main part of the project, the team will produce cross-country empirical studies on the actual implementation of minority legislation in the following fields:

• Culture

• Media

• Education

• Use of language

• Economic participation

• Political participation