In general terms, the term ‘minority policy’ refers to all state and societal institutions, processes, policies and practices relating to a numerically smaller group. In an international context, ‘minority policy’ refers to the targeted promotion of the creation and enforcement of international standards for the protection of minorities by states, international organisations, regional institutions and non-state actors.

In the sense commonly used today in politics and political science, minorities are characterised by relatively stable attributes, in accordance with Recommendation 1201 of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, to which repeated reference is made in various international documents, particularly those of the EU. This was preceded by the work of the UN Special Rapporteurs of the ‘UN Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities’. According to the definitions provided by Francesco Capotorti (1925–2002) and Jules Deschênes (1923–2000), a minority is objectively characterised by four elements: (1) numerical inferiority in comparison with the total population, (2) a non-dominant position within the state, (3) common ethnic, religious or linguistic characteristics, and (4) a sense of solidarity and identity. To this must be added nationality (5) as a criterion for the concept of a minority, albeit a controversial one. The question of whether only long-established (‘autochthonous’) minority groups should be covered by the relevant protective provisions, or whether ‘new’ minorities – i.e. immigrants and labour migrants who do not hold the nationality of the host state in question, regularly gives rise to controversy. Traditional literature on international law takes the view that only long-established minority groups with specific ethnic, linguistic or religious characteristics, fall within the definition of a minority; whilst they hold the nationality of the state in question for historical reasons, they differ from the majority population due to their specific cultural characteristics. In contrast, the ‘progressive’ concept of a minority is intended to include ‘new’ minorities as well.

In the context of constitutional law, minorities face problems of integration or assimilation from the majority’s perspective, and of preserving their identity or maintaining separation from the perspective of the minority unwilling to integrate or assimilate. From their point of view, minorities have made demands for recognition as an ethnic/religious/national minorities and legal protection, the maintenance or granting of special rights (language rights, separate schools, etc.), as well as, where applicable, political self-government, protection against being outvoted by the majority, social gender equality and special support (positive discrimination).

English: minority policy; Spanish: política de minorías; French: politique des minorités; Italian: politica per le minoranze; Hungarian: kisebbségi politika; Polish: polityka mniejszości; Romanian: politica de minoritate; Slovak: menšinové politiky

Minority policy is an ‘essentially contested concept’ – that is, a term whose meaning cannot be clarified simply through conceptual precision, as it is controversial (primarily for political reasons). To date, there is no authoritative international definition of‘minority’. In academic ‘conceptual analysis’, the term ‘minority’ is therefore often first distinguished from other, competing concepts. Alongside the term ‘minority’, other terms are also used in academia and in international discourse, which differ from one another not only semantically. Each use of the term carries with it certain connotations (and, in most cases, political interests). The term ‘ethnic group’, for example, refers to an ethnic community separated by national borders within the framework of a larger ethnic confederation or nation-state (kin-state). Entire peoples or ethnic groups (without their own nation-state) are also referred to as ‘ethnic groups’, such as the Bretons in France, the Sorbs in Germany or the Livonians in Latvia. Although the two terms are not synonymous, ‘ethnic group’ is often used interchangeably with ‘minority’. The criterion of numerical inferiority is of lesser importance when it comes to ethnic groups. If several groups within a state are roughly equal in number, they are regarded as separate ‘ethnic groups’. At the same time, this term very often encompasses autochthonous national minorities, such as German-speaking minorities in East Central Europe. Consequently, the term can only be translated into a few languages (in Hungarian, for example, the identical word ‘népcsoport’ exists); in international practice, preference is given to the somewhat more neutral term ‘minority’. The term “ethnic group” is also emphasised by the clear intention to regard the group as the target of minority policy. From a historical perspective, however, the term is not without its problems and is tainted by the criminal “ethnic group policy” ofthe “Third Reich”.

Of particular importance in the conceptual classification of minority policy – especially from the perspective of international law – is the distinction between the terms ‘people’ and ‘minority’. The definition of these terms is not only of semantic significance here, but is also relevant to the status of the group concerned. In this context, the reference to a territory – often understood as a contiguous, demarcated area in which a people constitutes the majority of the population – plays a particularly important role. According to the three-element doctrine under international law, the people of a state are directly linked to the state’s territory. Territorial status is the decisive criterion for the‘right of peoplesto self-determination’, which is accorded to national or ethnic minorities only in exceptional cases, such as where there is direct violence against the minority. However, as a minority may also have, or indeed must have, a territorial connection (the criterion of residence), it is generally difficult to draw a clear distinction in this regard.

A further distinction to be made is that between national and ethnic minorities. The term ‘national minority’ is frequently used to describe communities which, either on their own or as part of a nation living outside the borders of their home state, are capable of organising their community independently. An ethnic minority in the narrower sense is generally at a lower level of socio-political development. The term ‘ethnic minority’ is also frequently used as an umbrella term for national and ethnic minorities, in order to highlight the distinction from religious and linguistic minorities.

The term ‘nationality’ describes the affiliation of a person or a group to a nation or a people. For example, the Catalans in Spain refer to themselves as a ‘nationality’ (nacionalidad). However, the term is considered historically outdated and can have various meanings. In the singular, the English ‘nationality’, the French ‘nationalité’ and the Italian ‘nazionalità’ simply mean‘citizenship’.

The conventional concept of a minority must also be distinguished from the terms ‘language group’, ‘language community’ and ‘linguistic minority’. These terms are frequently used in domestic law. For example, the Flemish in Belgium are officially a ‘language community’, whilst the constituent communities of Switzerland are referred to as ‘language groups’. Article 6 of the Italian Constitution, on the other hand, refers to “linguistic minorities” (minoranze linguistiche), which are to be protected by specific provisions. This conceptual distinction can serve to “downgrade” an ethnic or national minority to a language group. In doing so, the issues associated with ethnic or national minorities, as well as any aspirations towards autonomy, are deliberately downplayed, and the potentially diverse distinguishing characteristics of minorities are reduced to the single element of language.

In constitutional discourse and political theory since antiquity, minority policy acquired its significance in the narrower sense with the emergence of the pair of terms ‘minority’ and ‘majority’ and their adoption during the French Revolution. With the postulate of equality for all people in politics and society put forward here, particularities, deviations and differences became, for the first time, a problem for social and political integration. This gave rise to the discourses and controversies surrounding minority policy within the tension between areas that are interrelated to varying degrees: (1) in constitutional and public law in relation to political decisions to be made, (2) from a religious perspective, as a deviation from the dominant religious community whilst claiming equal standing, (3) in the field of political history and international law, as policy concerning and directed towards a group of people with specific characteristics (see above), (4) from a social-psychological/social-scientific perspective, for people who differ in their personality structure, behaviour and constitution from the characteristics that define society as a whole, from other sections of the population or from their social norms.

It is a matter of debate in research whether all these fields of meaning can be subsumed under a single term, since, for example, the ‘otherness’ of a population group does not necessarily go hand in hand with numerical inferiority. Furthermore, it is questionable whether various marginalised social groups can even be subsumed under the same concept of ‘minority’, as they lack further unifying characteristics apart from their deviation from the mainstream, and the conditions of their social ‘outsiderness’ vary greatly from one another. Minority policy therefore relates not only to an existing set of circumstances, nor exclusively to a numerical or power balance, but to the totality of social relationships within which, due to the norms of a dominant group, other people, groups or behaviours are accorded less recognition and, as a result, are more limited in their life prospects and opportunities to assert themselves than the existing possibilities would allow.

Minority policy (understood as policy aimed at promoting the protection of minorities) is generally contrasted with assimilation policy. In sociology, assimilation refers to the process by which different social groups or sections of the population become more like one another. Assimilation (from the Latin assimilare: to make similar) describes the process whereby individuals or groups adopt the dominant culture of another group and become integrated into that society. It can lead to the merging of the minority culture with the majority culture, or to the suppression of a group’s identity, culture, language, etc. This process can take place at either the collective or individual level. Assimilation can lead to the dominance of a majority over a minority and can occur at a cultural (adoption of language, traditions and customs), structural (position within the labour market, the health, pension and education systems, etc.), social or emotional level. Within a political system, assimilation can be enforced, for example, through electoral thresholds for smaller parties or through a first-past-the-post voting system.

When it comes to the protection of minorities, a distinction can be made between ‘passive’ minority policy and ‘active’ minority policy. The former involves the prevention of discrimination. The latter builds on these prerequisites and supplements them with ‘active’ measures aimed at achieving substantive or ‘full’ equality. On the basis of the general principle of equality and the usual prohibitions on discrimination, general civil liberties may also be exercised by members of a minority. At this level, the protection of minorities, as a sub-area of general human rights protection, is also enshrined in EU law. However, the prohibition of discrimination in itself only protects against negative discrimination and does not yet entail the promotion of groups or individuals through positive discrimination (affirmative action). The state is obliged to actively protect members of minorities from discrimination, including by private individuals, for example in private legal transactions. In this context, the minority is the object of a passive minority policy.

At the individual level, minority policy is realised through rights held by the individual rather than by a group or collective. Individual rights relevant to minorities are constituted, for example, by the principle of equality and equal treatment, particularly with regard to its specification in the form of the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of racial, ethnic, linguistic or religious affiliation (prohibition of discrimination). In addition, individual rights include the freedom of national self-identification, the right to use one’s mother tongue and one’s name in the form of the mother tongue, and the right to freedom of religious or cultural expression. A classic instrument of minority policy in this context is also the right to education in one’s mother tongue; however, this requires state involvement and is usually subject to a statutory reservation regarding its implementation.

These rights may be structured in such a way that they also lead to positive discrimination. To this end, members of minority groups are granted legal rights that go beyond those of the ‘average citizen’. This concept may oblige the state to treat the minority more favourably if this is necessary to preserve its (cultural, linguistic, political) identity. The basis of positive discrimination is the assumption that minorities are in a weaker position compared to the majority of the nation-state. The disadvantages arising from minority status can be offset in the long term, or at least until de facto gender equality with members of the majority is achieved, through special supportive measures.

Group rights differ from individual rights in that it is the minorities as such who are the holders of collective rights. Subjective rights, however, require a clearly definable legal subject. Consequently, the group must be given a legally tangible form. The target of collective minority policy is the minority as a community of persons. This enables the minority, as a legal subject and holder of collective minority rights, to participate in legal transactions as well as in social and economic life. Ultimately, sovereign powers and other powers – extending beyond the sum of the rights of individual members of the minority – may also be conferred. Collectively oriented minority rights concern, for example, language rights, parliamentary representation or minority-specific legal protection.

Concepts of autonomy are to be regarded as the highest level of minority policy. They differ qualitatively from ‘simple’ minority rights. In the case of autonomy, organised minorities are not merely granted individual rights or powers over specific matters, but are accorded comprehensive competences. The substantive formulation of far-reaching powers for minorities leads to the realisation of forms of autonomy under minority rights. In this context, personal autonomy – which is linked to members of the minority as individuals, irrespective of their areas of settlement – must be distinguished from territorial autonomy. The latter establishes a body within a specific area inhabited by a minority, which is endowed with a special legal status. These regulatory frameworks can take the form of domestic federalism as well as regional and local autonomy.

In some EU Member States or regions, models of autonomy for minority groups have already been established, for example in South Tyrol, Carinthia, Catalonia, Galicia, the Basque Country, in Portugal (the Azores and Madeira), in Hungary, Romania, in East Belgium, in the Danish-German border region, as well as in Denmark (the Faroe Islands) and Finland (the Åland Islands). Various graduated approaches to territorial and personal autonomy have been applied in these cases. However, the creation of such comprehensive forms of autonomy for minorities is controversial. Critics repeatedly argue that these make it more difficult for minorities to integrate into the state structure, thereby reinforcing segregation and ultimately failing to resolve conflicts between the majority and minority populations.

Historically, minority policy can be traced back to the very beginnings of social organisations. When considering the development of minority policy in modern Europe and its global implications, it is important to distinguish between different stages of development, which in turn should be seen as responses to the upheavals experienced in the course of modern society’s development. It was only the growing interdependence of ever-larger population groups, coupled with increasing opportunities for individual autonomy, that, at the dawn of the modern era, created the social, political and legal scope within which minorities emerged as a political and social phenomenon.

The issue of minorities, which had been discussed sporadically since antiquity, first became a pressing concern in the modern era from a religious perspective. At the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern era, the fragmentation of the Catholic Church led to a proliferation of different religious groups, which, in defiance of the Church’s and the state’s efforts at unification, henceforth represented religious diversity and, over the centuries, demanded religious freedoms and tolerance. The pressure towards homogenisation in early modern societies – which arose not least as a reaction to the Reformation – also turned the problem of religious minorities into a political one. A second step towards homogenisation was the development of universal and egalitarian human rights through the philosophy of the Enlightenment. Religious minorities had already demanded the right to their own distinct identity whilst simultaneously asserting a claim to equality, that is, to principles applicable to all. This development led to the debate on human rights in the 18th and 19th centuries. The issue of minorities, which was inherent in these demands, came to the fore particularly as models of political organisation were aligned with the concepts of the nation state. The roots of minority protection in Europe thus date back at least to the Middle Ages; the term ‘national minorities’ in the strict sense has only been in use since the 18th century, following the emergence of the idea of the nation state with the French Revolution. With the formation of nation-states in the 19th century, national minorities also increasingly emerged; whilst their claims to self-determination could, on the one hand, be based on ‘national’ ideas, on the other hand they ran counter to the existing nation-states and threatened their very existence. The nation-states countered the aspirations of these minorities through forced assimilation (such as Russification, Magyarisation and Germanisation).^[1]

From the perspective of international law, the changes to the political map following the First World War can be regarded as a consequence (or: reflection) of the particular significance of national minorities, which was taken into account through treaties on the protection of minorities. With the end of the League of Nations and the outbreak of the Second World War, the first attempt to establish an international system for the protection of minorities also failed. In the post-war period, regionalist, secessionist and terrorist movements in Western Europe once again highlighted the issue of national minorities (including the Bretons, Basques and Irish). In the Eastern Bloc, minority issues were either treated as taboo or (violently) suppressed under the communist ideal of unity. Following the upheaval of 1989–90 in Eastern Europe and the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union, the political landscape there was shaken by independence movements in the Baltic republics, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Armenia. These were particularly intense in Russia itself (Chechnya) and Georgia (Abkhazia, South Ossetia), as well as in the former Yugoslavia, where the issue of minorities intensified international efforts to protect them. Initially, it was the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE until 1995) and later the Council of Europe that championed the resolution of ethnic conflicts through bilateral and multilateral treaties. The Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages formed key components of the European minority protection regime. At the same time, in view of the impending accession to the European Union, bilateral neighbourhood treaties were concluded between some Central and Eastern European countries, which also contained provisions on the protection of minorities. International minority protection then received a further boost through the conditionality of the EU’s minority policy, as part of its eastward enlargement, vis-à-vis the countries of East-Central and South-Eastern Europe.

• Georg Brunner: Ethnic Issues and Minority Conflicts in Eastern Europe. 2nd, updated and fully revised edition. Gütersloh 1996 (Strategies for Europe).
• Stefan August Lütgenau: Regionalisation and Minority Policies in Central Europe. Case Studies from Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. Innsbruck 2011 (Foster Europe – International Studies Series 1).
• Dieter Nohlen: Minorities/Minority Rights/Protection of Minorities. In: Dieter Nohlen, Florian Grotz (eds.): A Short Encyclopaedia of Politics. 4th, updated edition. Bonn 2008 (Publications of the Federal Agency for Civic Education 759).
• Maximilian Opitz: The European Union’s Minority Policy. Problems, Potential, Prospects. Berlin 2007 (Studies on Migration and Minorities 16).
• Gabriel N. Toggenburg, Günther Rautz: The ABC of Minority Protection in Europe. Vienna 2010.

• Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Abingdon (1998 onwards)
• International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, Leiden (1996/97 onwards)
• Ethnopolitics (formerly The Global Review of Ethnopolitics), Abingdon (2005 onwards)
• Journal of Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe, Flensburg (2000–)

[1] The term ‘Russification’ refers to all measures taken as part of Russian or Soviet domestic and foreign policy to expand the sphere of influence of the Russian language and culture at the expense of other languages and cultures. With regard to Magyarisation, historical research distinguishes between Magyarisation in the broader sense – that is, the ‘natural assimilation’ or acculturation of the non-Magyar population of the Kingdom of Hungary – and Magyarisation in the narrower sense. The latter refers to an often violently enforced endeavour, carried out in the 18th and 19th centuries through state measures, to make non-Magyars residing in the Kingdom of Hungary part of the Magyar nation. The term ‘Germanisation’ refers to the spread of German culture during certain historical periods and the transformation or suppression of other, non-German cultures that usually accompanied it. Germanisation was pursued with particular violence and ruthlessness during the Nazi era, for example through the renaming of place names and the banning of languages other than German in publications, the press, schools, etc.