Hungarians in Ukraine, Greeks in Albania, Bulgarians in North Macedonia. Minority rights can slow a country’s path to the EU, yet Brussels has no rulebook of its own to judge them. Vello Pettai, director of the European Centre for Minority Issues, warns that the communities themselves are too often left out.
Bosnia and Herzegovina holds general elections on 4 October, and Serbia votes in early parliamentary elections on 25 October. The Western Balkans are once again at the centre of the debate over the future of EU enlargement. Yet minority rights remain a complex part of the accession process. The EU has comprehensive legislation on areas such as environmental or tax policy, but not on minority rights. How effectively, then, does the EU monitor the protection of national minorities in candidate countries?
To fill the gap, Brussels increasingly relies on the monitoring mechanisms of the Council of Europe, a separate 46-member human rights organisation. But Vello Pettai, director of the European Centre for Minority Issues, told EU Perspectives that minority communities themselves are often left out of the process. He warns that accession requirements could become a box-ticking exercise rather than lead to meaningful improvements.
How could the EU and the Council of Europe improve the monitoring of national minority rights in candidate countries?
This is an ongoing issue. The EU is interested in assessing whether candidate countries are able to fulfil the EU acquis, as well as the Union’s fundamental principles and core values. Minority protection is part of that framework. However, the EU does not have a clear and comprehensive body of legislation specifically addressing minority rights.
This has made the issue somewhat vague for the EU, even though minority protection is a central element of the Union’s fundamental values. It goes back to the Copenhagen criteria and is also reflected in the Treaty on European Union and the Charter of Fundamental Rights. So there is a clear commitment, but the EU does not always have a clear framework for determining what it should stand for and how it should monitor it.
The Council of Europe, by contrast, has a fully fledged treaty, the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, and carries out monitoring of minority protection in its member states. The limitation is that this monitoring takes place only every five years, and the Council of Europe has relatively little leverage over states that do not fully comply with its recommendations.
If the EU is applying conditionality to candidate countries such as North Macedonia, Ukraine, or Albania, the Council of Europe’s recommendations could help strengthen the EU’s own monitoring and enforcement mechanisms during the enlargement process. We are already seeing a clear convergence between the two organisations.
The EU is increasingly relying on Council of Europe recommendations on minority protection in individual countries. This strengthens the EU’s ability to address minority rights during enlargement and helps fill the gap created by the absence of a more developed EU framework.
How do minority rights fit into the accession process of countries such as North Macedonia, Albania, and Ukraine?
National minority issues are relevant in every country, whether or not they are high on the political agenda, because all countries have some degree of national minorities. For example: South Tyrol is a clear example of a national minority issue for Italy and its autonomy is well regulated and extensively studied.
As for the EU accession process, it covers more than 30 chapters. National minority issues represent only a relatively small part of Chapter 23, which deals with the judiciary and fundamental rights. So we are not talking about an issue that is, by itself, decisive for whether a country can join the EU. At the same time, minority rights are monitored because they fall within Cluster 1, the so-called fundamentals cluster, which covers rule of law and other core areas of the accession process.
Our role as a research institute is to monitor these issues across the candidate countries. These include Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia, Serbia, Moldova, Ukraine, and, to a lesser extent, Türkiye.
Each country has a different situation in terms of the number and size of minorities, as well as their historical and political position. That is one reason why the EU cannot simply have a single minority policy that applies in exactly the same way to every country. Albania, for example, has relatively small minority groups, including a Greek minority, while Moldova has a large Russian-speaking population. The situations are very different.
This is also why the EU increasingly relies on the Council of Europe’s work. Its experts visit countries, conduct site visits, and collect detailed information. Their assessments can cover minority education, language legislation, identity issues, and the media.
What role do so-called ‘kin states’ play, meaning EU member states whose ethnic kin live as minorities in candidate countries?
A well-known example is Hungary and the Hungarian minority in Ukraine. Hungary has opposed Ukraine’s progress towards EU accession partly on the grounds of concerns over the treatment of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine.
EU member states with kin minorities may use their political influence, including their ability to block decisions, to raise concerns about the treatment of those communities. — Vello Pettai, director of the European Centre for Minority Issues
Similar dynamics can be found elsewhere: Greece in relation to the Greek minority in Albania, Bulgaria in relation to Bulgarians in North Macedonia, and Hungary in relation to Hungarians in Serbia. These relationships can add tension to the accession process. EU member states with kin minorities may use their political influence, including their ability to block decisions, to raise concerns about the treatment of those communities.
What are the main concerns regarding national minority rights in candidate countries?
A general concern among researchers, as well as minorities themselves, is that minority communities should be more directly involved in the screening and monitoring process. The EU tends to deal primarily with national governments.
It conducts screening with governments and discusses which laws should be amended, which legislation should be adopted and which regulations need to be introduced. But minorities are often not sufficiently consulted or included in that process. This can result in an agreement between the EU and the government that does not necessarily reflect the priorities of the minority communities themselves.
One example is the requirement for Serbia, North Macedonia, and Ukraine to adopt action plans for minority protection. Yet we do not necessarily see minorities being able to shape those action plans according to what they themselves consider necessary.
It is a difficult balance, because the EU does not want to become the spokesperson for minority communities. That is not its role. At the same time, the accession process should lead to genuine improvements in minority policy, rather than becoming simply a box-ticking exercise.
Does the situation in Transnistria, Moldova’s Russian-backed breakaway region, fall under the broader issue of national minority rights, or is it a different kind of issue?
We certainly take it into account, but Moldova is not unique in this regard. If you look at Serbia, for example, how can Serbia progress towards EU membership without resolving the issue of Kosovo? Similarly, how can Ukraine become a full EU member without resolving some of its other territorial issues, including those relating to Donbas and Crimea? The EU has already encountered similar situations. The accession of Cyprus provides a precedent for freezing certain territorial issues: Northern Cyprus is still not part of the EU, even though Cyprus is a member state.
The question is whether the EU will be prepared to take a similar approach in other cases, or whether it will use political capital to try to resolve these territorial issues before accession and allow countries to join with their full territories. The latter would require a great deal of diplomatic, political, and financial work, including potentially supporting the reintegration of territories.
The EU can provide incentives and conditionality, but it cannot solve all of these problems for candidate countries. — Vello Pettai, director of the European Centre for Minority Issues
I am not sure that the EU has made a definitive decision on these questions. The Cyprus precedent means that it can, in principle, leave certain territorial disputes unresolved. The EU can provide incentives and conditionality, but it cannot solve all of these problems for candidate countries. Ultimately, countries themselves have to address them.
For the moment, I think Moldova will continue to make progress as best it can, and if it is able to incorporate Transnistria into that process, then it will. But we will have to see how the situation develops.
Could national minorities play a role in the upcoming elections in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, or affect the two countries’ paths to the EU?
I am most familiar with the situation in Serbia. The elections called by Aleksandar Vučić will be decisive for his future as prime minister. At least they represent an end point to a long period of protests and political confrontation.
National minorities have played a role in this context. They have, in many cases, supported the student movement. Ultimately, however, much of Serbia’s political future lies with the opposition movement, the student movement, and the outcome of the elections.
There is no element of secessionism or similar tensions at the level of the national minorities. The situation among minorities in northern Serbia and Vojvodina is relatively stable. So I think the broader question is really about Vučić’s political future.
I am less familiar with the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I understand it as a complex political system involving different groups, with the Republika Srpska—one of the two political entities of the country, inhabited predominantly by Bosnian Serbs—being particularly important. One question is whether a change of government in Serbia would affect the way in which Republika Srpska operates within Bosnia and Herzegovina.
More fundamentally, however, Bosnia and Herzegovina faces a major question in relation to EU accession. Can it continue to function as a single country and reach the unified decisions necessary to move forward with the accession process, or does its status as a candidate country risk remaining largely symbolic?
