CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2009
| Author | Eplényi, Kata |
|---|---|
| Title | THE LANGUAGE RIGHTS OF HUNGARIAN COMMUNITIES IN SLOVAKIA AND ROMANIA: THE IMPACTS AND PERSPECTIVES OF EU-MEMBERSHIP |
| Summary | After the end of the Cold War minority rights were re-internationalized and minority protection became a significant factor in Europe. The European Union also proved its commitment to minority protection and in 1993 the Copenhagen European Council incorporated the ‘respect for and protection of national minorities‘—in the thesis referred to as the minority condition—as a part of the political condition for EU membership. As a result of the newly established conditions the EU created a more or less successful incentive structure for the minority protection in the accession period. There is already an ongoing debate on the international level about these types of ‘conditionality,’ but post EU accession events are, however, less studied by scholars. This paper wishes to contribute to this current debate by exploring the impacts of minority condition after the accession. According to this hypothesis the effect of minority condition was more effective before membership, and is less effective after EU-accession. As the Copenhagen condition regarding minority protection no longer exists the candidates became members, the states can adopt laws restricting minority rights or language usage without any consequences. To reveal the possible inconsistencies concerning minority protection the thesis takes the example of the Hungarian communities living in Slovakia and Romania, and focus on the language rights of the Hungarian communities. First the paper detects the language rights of the communities before enlargement, and than compare it to the situation after 2004 in case of Slovakia, and after 2007 in case of Romania. |
| Supervisor | Várady, Tibor |
| Department | Nationalism Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2009/eplenyi_kata.pdf |
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