National minority

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A national minority is an ethnic minority that falls under the provisions of the Council of Europe's Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities .

Basics

Unlike an ethnic group or ethnic minority , the term denotes a legal status that guarantees certain rights and the like. a. in the field of education and language promotion . It is irrelevant here whether this group ethnically belongs to the people of another state (e.g. Danes in Germany, Hungarians in Romania , Italians in Slovenia , German minorities in Eastern Europe such as the Danube Swabians ), whether they live as minorities in several states (e.g. Frisians in Germany and the Netherlands, Roma in large parts of Europe) or is based as a closed ethnic group in just one country (e.g. Sorbs in Germany, Kashubians in Poland ).

At the European level, the term “national minority” is often used as an umbrella term for religious, linguistic, ethnic and cultural minorities. The term national minority is used both in the documents of the Council of Europe and in those of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) . However, even within these organizations there is no universally accepted definition of this term. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe attempted to define it in 1993. In a draft of an additional protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) on the protection of national minorities (which did not materialize), a group of people is referred to as a national minority who

  • are resident in the territory of a state and are its citizens,
  • maintain long-term, solid and permanent ties to this state,
  • have particular ethnic, cultural, religious or linguistic characteristics,
  • are sufficiently representative, although their number is smaller than that of the rest of the population of this state or a region of this state,
  • are inspired by the desire to preserve together the characteristics characteristic of their identity, in particular their culture, their traditions, their religion or their language.

The Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities of November 1, 1995, however, does not contain a definition of the term; this is reserved for national takeovers.

National minorities in German-speaking countries

Germany

House of Minorities in Flensburg

The Federal Republic of Germany signed the framework agreement in 1997. It expressly notes that it is up to the individual contracting states to determine to which groups it will apply after ratification .

The four national minorities living in Germany are:

The term national minority is only applied to Danes and Sinti and Roma, while the Frisians - without this changing their legal status - are referred to as an ethnic group and the Sorbs as a people . This language regulation goes back to ideological distortions between the so-called national Frisians or Danish-minded North Frisians on the one hand and the German-minded North Frisians on the other from the time of the referendum in Schleswig of 1920 . After North Frisia remained with Germany, the national Frisians, who subsequently worked closely with the Danish minority, pursued an active minority policy. The German-minded Frisians, on the other hand, avoided this term and a corresponding demarcation policy, they placed their work for the Frisian language and culture in the context of a special tribal type of German culture. This ideological contradiction continues to this day and means that the majority of Frisians do not want to be called a 'minority' even if they have a distinct Frisian identity.

The following criteria must be met in order to be identified as a national minority in Germany:

  1. The relatives are German nationals ;
  2. They differ from the majority people through their own language, culture and history, i.e. through their own identity;
  3. You want to keep that identity;
  4. They are traditionally at home in Germany;
  5. They live here in traditional settlement areas.

Until they were deprived of their rights on September 7, 1939, there was also a recognized Polish minority in the German Reich . Today all formerly German areas in which a Polish minority resided are part of the territory of the Republic of Poland .

The four autochthonous national minorities of Germany (Danish South Schleswig-Holstein, Frisians, Sorbs and Roma) have been working together in the minority council and its minority secretariat in Berlin since 2005 . The Minority Secretariat primarily acts as a liaison office for national minorities to the Bundestag , Bundesrat and the Federal Government and accompanies parliamentary work at federal level with regard to minority issues. The Minority Council, which is connected to the Minority Secretariat, works primarily as a joint political representation of interests and, among other things, advocates the inclusion of a separate article for the four national minorities in the Basic Law (similar article in the state constitutions of Brandenburg , Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein ). Between 1924 and 1939, the Association of National Minorities in Germany existed as a forerunner of the Minority Council .

Austria

The minorities in Austria enjoy the protection that is initially laid down in the Treaty of Saint-Germain of 1919 and, after the Second World War, in Article 7 of the Austrian State Treaty .

The Austrian legislature defines both in the ratification of the Framework Convention in BGBl . III No. 120/1998 under the term "national minorities" within the meaning of the Framework Convention as well as in Section 1 (2) of the Ethnic Groups Act of 1976 as ethnic groups within the meaning of this Federal Act :

"[...] the groups of Austrian citizens living and at home in parts of the federal territory with a non-German mother tongue and ethnicity ."

This connects the concept of the ethnic group with those of the ethnic and linguistic minority as well as the independent culture.

The following are recognized as an autochthonous ethnic group :

whereby the Croatian and Slovenian minorities of Burgenland , Styria and Carinthia enjoy the direct protection of the State Treaty.

They make up less than one percent of the total population. In certain districts, their free use of language as the official language (also in court), as well as school attendance in their mother tongue, is guaranteed. Bilingual place-name signs must also be set up in these places - the occasion of the place-name dispute .

Switzerland

The Swiss Confederation ratified the framework agreement in 1998 and, in an explanatory declaration, limited the concept of the national minority to the Swiss population groups as follows:

"In Switzerland, national minorities within the meaning of this Framework Convention are those groups of people who are numerically smaller than the rest of the population of the country or a canton, whose members have Swiss citizenship , who have old, solid and permanent ties to Switzerland and are carried by the will to preserve together what defines their identity, especially their culture, their traditions, their religion or their language. "

Since autumn 2016, the Swiss federal authorities have been declaring: "With the ratification of the Framework Convention of the Council of Europe of February 1, 1995 for the protection of national minorities, Switzerland recognized the Swiss Yeniche and Sinti as a national minority - regardless of whether they live a mobile or sedentary life." In 1998, the Swiss Confederation designated the “travelers” with Swiss citizenship as a recognized national minority. An application for recognition of the Roma was pending at the Federal Council. The Federal Council rejected this application in June 2018, but affirmed that it should «fight racism and negative stereotypes and protect the Roma from discrimination».

Belgium

Belgium signed the framework agreement in 2001 but has not yet ratified it. From a political point of view, the Flemish minority in particular fears that ratification could endanger the existing complex equilibrium and agreements between the three language communities in Belgium.

Liechtenstein

Liechtenstein explains

“That in particular Articles 24 and 25 of the Framework Convention are to be understood taking into account the fact that there are no national minorities in the Principality of Liechtenstein within the meaning of the Framework Convention. Liechtenstein regards its ratification of the Framework Convention as an act of solidarity with regard to the objectives of the Convention. "

- Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities

Article 24 clarifies the implementation mechanism, Article 25 the transmission of information about legislative measures to the Council of Europe.

Luxembourg

Luxembourg signed the framework agreement in 1995 but has not yet ratified it.

National minorities in Europe

In Poland there are nine national and four ethnic minorities (see also Poland #Ethnien ). In the Polish “Minority Law” the difference between a national and an ethnic minority is defined by the fact that the national minority, unlike the ethnic minority, identifies with “the organized nation in its own country”. According to this, Armenians, Germans, Jews, Lithuanians, Russians, Slovaks, Czechs, Ukrainians and Belarusians have the status of national, Karaites ( ethno-religious minority ), Lemks, Roma and Tatars that of ethnic minorities. In total there are 253,273 people, which is 0.7% of Poland's population.

In Hungary , with the Armenians, Bulgarians, Germans, Greeks, Croats, Poles, Romanians, Russians, Serbs, Slovaks, Slovenes and Ukrainians, a total of 12 groups are recognized as national minorities (see also Ethnic Groups in Hungary ).

In Kosovo Albanians mainly live ( Kosovo Albanians ) . In addition to them, Serbs , Bosniaks ( Bosniaks in Kosovo ) , Roma , Ashkali , Croats ( Janjevci ) , Gorans , Torbeschen , Kosovo Turks and the so-called Egyptians ( Kosovo-Egyptians ) are recognized as a national minority (see also Ethnic Groups in Kosovo ) . The six stars on the flag of Kosovo stand for the Albanians, Serbs, Bosniaks, Roma, Turks and the rest of the country's minorities.

literature

  • Martina Boden: Nationalities, minorities and ethnic conflicts in Europe . Olzog, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-7892-8640-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. Official translation of Germany. In: Council of Europe Treaty Office. Council of Europe / Euro Europe , February 1, 1995, accessed on 19 August 2014 .
  2. ↑ Definition of national minority on the humanrights.ch website
  3. ↑ National minorities ( Memento from June 5, 2010 in the Internet Archive ). On tatsachen-ueber-deutschland.de
  4. ^ Robert Bohn: History of Schleswig-Holstein . CH Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-406-50891-2 , p. 8 .
  5. ↑ National minorities, minority and regional languages ​​in Germany ( Memento of the original from June 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Communication from the Federal Ministry of the Interior dated December 15, 1999 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bmi.bund.de
  6. ↑ cf. Steensen, Thomas (2001): History of North Frisia in modern times. In: Munske, Horst Haider et al .: Handbuch des Frisian. Tübingen, p. 695
  7. ↑ Answer of the Federal Government to the minor question from the MP Ulla Jelpke and the parliamentary group of the PDS on the promotion of German minorities in Eastern Europe since 1991/1992 (PDF; 70 kB) from September 6, 2000
  8. ↑ Minority Secretariat . Minority Secretariat of the four autochthonous national minorities and ethnic groups in Germany, accessed on February 13, 2014 .
  9. ↑ Ethnic groups ( Memento of the original from September 3, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , BKA @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bka.gv.at
  10. ↑ Quoted in: Federal Office of Justice, report on the legal status of travelers in their capacity as a recognized national minority , March 27, 2002, p. 5
  11. ↑ Swiss Confederation, Federal Office of Culture: Yenish and Sinti as a national minority.
  12. ↑ Kathrin Ammann: Roma in Switzerland: A minority fights for recognition. In: Swissinfo.ch. April 7, 2017, accessed December 18, 2018.
  13. ↑ Announcement: Part of society, but ... - Swiss Roma are not a national minority. In: SRF.ch. June 1, 2018, accessed December 18, 2018.
  14. ↑ a b Unknown author: The situation of the German minority in Poland. ( Memento from June 28, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) In: oberschlesisches-landesmuseum.de. 2008 (Quote: "Information taken from the report of the Polish Ministry of the Interior on the situation of national and ethnic minorities and the regional language in the Republic of Poland [...] from 2007").
  15. ↑ legal text: ACT of 6 January 2005 on National and Ethnic Minorities and the Regional Language (Journal of Laws of 2005 No. 17, item 141, No. 62, item 550th...).