Tag: minorities

For Bucharest, exchanging accusations with Hungary offers an opportunity to temporarily distract attention from its domestic situation. The country is emerging from the political crisis that engulfed it in 2012 caused by a dispute between Ponta and President Traian Basescu, writes Stratfor.

Latvia's prime minister began talks yesterday (3 October) on forming a new majority government after a strong election win kept the country on its IMF-led austerity path to eventual eurozone entry.

France's proposed ban on full face veils in public cleared its last legislative hurdle when the Senate approved yesterday (14 September) a bill outlawing the garments. In the meantime, the Eiffel Tower was evacuated following a false bomb alert. The French press writes that the police took the alert "seriously" following the burqa ban.

Lawmakers from the far-right were the only ones to defend French President Nicolas Sarkozy's tough policies towards the Roma during a debate in the European Parliament yesterday (2 September).

EU Commissioner Viviane Reding, responsible for justice, fundamental rights and citizenship, yesterday (25 August) criticised the French authorities for seeking solutions to immigration problems and tackling the Roma issue outside of an EU context. She also indirectly condemned Italy for its "discriminatory" and "inflammatory" rhetoric.

The European Parliament's silence during the summer recess has been broken by liberal group ALDE, which called for a parliamentary debate on the Roma situation in Europe in early September, following France's move to expel members of that minority to their countries of origin, Romania and Bulgaria.

The European Commission is following very closely France's dealings with its Roma, who the authorities are planning to expel in groups, Commission representatives said yesterday (18 August), after being asked by the Brussels press whether the expulsions were in line with EU legislation.

Former Romanian dissident László Tőkés, an ethnic Hungarian, was yesterday (15 June) elected European Parliament vice-president at the insistence of Budapest, EurActiv has learned. EurActiv Romania contributed to this article.

Catalan, Basque, Galician, Welsh and Scots Gaelic should be made official languages of the European Union, MEPs said last week, accusing Brussels of failing to protect "the rights of millions of speakers of non-official EU languages" and calling on the EU institutions to do "much more" to promote multilingualism.  

A new state language law passed by the Slovak parliament does not conform to EU standards as it discriminates against minority languages, the vice-chair of the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee said yesterday (9 July).

The decentralisation of Serbia by giving more authority to municipalities could benefit minority groups that constitute a local majority, argues Beata Huszka in a July 2007 policy brief for the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS).

Hungary angers neighbouring countries by granting special extraterritorial rights to Hungarians living abroad