Conclusions

Abstract

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have seen a struggle between two approaches to the problem of minorities and their protection, and the outcome of that struggle will have its effect on the future development of Europe.

One approach focused on the individual. Its supporters today argue that in the fast changing contemporary world where freedom of movement, globalisation in terms of financial movements, of the electronic information of the Internet, and the ever-increasing numbers of mixed marriages, the ground is being cut from under cultural communities who have occupied their land for centuries if not millennia, and this makes it unrealistic to think in tribal terms of ethnic purity or the need to maintain community solidarity in order to preserve identity. For them three things are enough when considering majority–minority relations. First, that individual members of a minority should enjoy rights equal to members of the majority. Second, individual membersof a minority should be able to enjoy a basic cultural autonomy, i.e., the right to have their own language taught in schools, and to have books and newspapers in that language, and (usually) to use it in relations with the public authorities.