WRITTEN QUESTION E-1927/99

by Reino Paasilinna (PSE) to the Commission

(4 November 1999)

Subject: Criteria for respect for minority rights

One of the criteria for enlargement is respect for minority rights. However, no Commission publication contains an official list indicating what minority rights comprise.

The Commission is drawing up the second annual report on the progress made by the applicant countries. The conditions applicable to the various countries differ. Has the Commission drawn up a list of minimum requirements? What qualitative and quantitative criteria does the Commission use in order to assess whether minority rights are adequately respected, with reference to ethnicity, race, language and religion?

Answer given by Mr Verheugen on behalf of the Commission

(2 December 1999)

It is true, as the Honourable Member points out, that the Commission has not published an official list of minority rights. It notes, however, that such rights are set out in the 1996 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the 1992 UN Declaration on the rights of persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedom and, above all, the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities drawn up in the framework of the Council of Europe in 1994. The rights referred to in these texts were taken into consideration when assessing the treatment and protection afforded to minorities by the countries applying for membership of the Union for the purposes of opinions on their accession requests in 1997 and the regular progress reports on individual countries sent to Parliament and the Council in 1998 and 1999. These opinions and reports show that the minority rights taken into account by the Commission relate to the preservation of ethnic and cultural identity, particularly language, religion, traditions and all other forms of cultural heritage. These rights also cover equality of treatment compared to people belonging to the majority in the various spheres of social and economic life, in particular access to employment, housing, education, goods and services, social protection and health care. The right to citizenship and the right on certain conditions to use the minority language in contacts with officialdom and in the courts, together with the right to association and freedom of expression, were also taken into account in the Commission's analysis with a view to establishing whether the treatment of minorities was similar to the rest of the population. The rights in question also extend to protection of minorities against acts of hostility and violence on account of their ethnic, cultural and linguistic identity.

The Commission can assure the Honourable Member that its analysis was carried out on the same basis for all the candidate countries and, while the terms of the appraisal might vary from one country to another, it is because the problems encountered differ, not the criteria used to assess them.

The Commission also reminds the Honourable Member that the positions it adopted concerning the upholding of minority rights in these countries, both in the opinions and regular reports, were arrived at after consultations with the highest authorities and organisations acting in this area at international level, namely the High Commissioner for National Minorities of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), the Council of Europe, the Helsinki Federation and Amnesty International.

This action has already produced results within the candidate countries: improvements concerning the naturalisation of members of the Russian-speaking minority in Estonia and Lithuania and the law on the use of minority languages in official proceedings that has finally been adopted in Slovakia, to cite only a couple of examples.

Finally, the Commission would like to highlight the importance of its communication to the Cologne European Council on countering racism, xenophobia and anti-semitism in the candidate countries(1).

The Commission trusts that its ongoing analysis and criticisms of the situation in the candidate countries will lead to minority rights being fully upheld and protected.

(1) COM(1999) 256 final.