Practice of Minority Protection in Central Europe

Academic research on the protection of national minorities often begins and ends with a country-by-country analysis of the legal framework for protection. Very often, however, it is the implementation of legal rules by administrative authorities and courts which proves to be quite problematic. Based on two years of legal and empirical research, this book focuses on the discrepancies between law in the books and law in practice with regard to minority protection in six Central and Southeast European countries: Austria, Hungary, Italy, Romania, the Slovak Republic, and Slovenia. Based on a comparative approach, the first part of the book provides a detailed assessment of the legal situation in six areas which are of key importance for an effective minority protection regime: culture, language use, media, education, economic participation, and political participation. The second part follows this structure and presents the main empirical findings from each of these areas based on intensive field research in the six countries. The analyses reveal the intimate links between the key areas and thereby prove that a comprehensive policy development for the protection of minorities has to take these interdependencies seriously. A set of recommendations offers an additional added value for practitioners working in international organizations, NGOs, national authorities, and representatives of national minorities themselves. (Series: Schriftenreihe der Europaischen Akademie Bozen, Bereich "Minderheiten und Autonomien" - Vol. 19)