The Political Participation of National Minorities in the Enlargement Process: the Case of Albania and FYR of Macedonia

• Author: Odeta Berberi
• Position: University of Tirana
• Pages: 19-29

European Journal of Economics, Law and Social Sciences

IIPCCL Publishing, Graz-Austria

Vol. 1 No. 1

January 2017

ISSN 2519-1284

Acces online at www.iipccl.org

19

The Political Participation of National Minorities in the Enlargement Process:

the Case of Albania and FYR of Macedonia

PhD (C.) Odeta Berberi

University of Tirana

Abstract

In the last decade an increasing number of authors have studied the EU transformative power

in Central Eastern Europe. In this paper I will analyse the impact of the enlargement process

in the political participation of national minorities in Western Balkans. With the term “impact”

I mean the absorption of formal and informal rules, procedures, norms and practices and I

am going to analyze the relation European Union/Western Balkans as unidirectional i.e. the

transposing of EU rules on accession countries. For this reason the EU requirements concerning

the right to political participation of national minorities in the concerning countries, will be

analysed. In the second part it will be analyzed how the EU requirements on the national

minority participation has been ‘translated’ in Macedonia and Albania. In this paper I will

combine a review of the academic literature on the topic with the illustration of practical case

study from the Western Balkans.

Keywords: EU enlargement, Western Balkans, political participation, FYR of Macedonia, Albania.

Introduction

When it comes to minority rights, it is important to make an important distinction

between the internal and external dimension of the EU. Other studies (Henrad 2009,

Hughes 2003) have stressed this distinction not only when it comes to minority rights

but in a more enlarged dimension such as human rights. For the purposes of this paper

I will refer to the term ‘internal dimension” of EU as the development of the acquis and

the tradition of European Union Member States concerning minority rights. Instead

with the term “external dimension” I will refer to the EU standards and criteria applied

in the relationship with ‘member to be’ countries in the accession process.

Back to the establishment of the regional organization, it is important to stress the

complete absence in the founding documents of the principles of human rights and

minority rights. This omission was justifi ed by the exclusive economic grounds of

the new Union.1 There are some novelties with the Treaty of Rome of 25 March 1957,

concerning the inclusion of some rights but nevertheless the rights included were

related to the functioning of the European Economic Community.2 From the Treaty

of Rome there were some tentative3 to include more human rights principles in the

1 The Treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC Treaty) was signed in Par-

is in 1951 and brought France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries together in a Community

with the aim of organizing free movement of coal and steel and free access to sources of production.

2 In specifi c, in the text the free movement of workers was included and the prohibition of discrimi-

nation of workers based on their nationality or sex.

3 Joint Declaration by the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission signed in Lux-

embourg on 5 April 1977.