Overview

The European Union, as it was perceived by its founders, was an economic organisation. The completion of the ambitious task of enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe in 2004 and 2007 surfaced, however, new legal and policy challenges for the Union. One of the most contested areas of action, connected to enlargement, for the EU has been minority rights monitoring. The new task created lack of clarity on the standards and criteria of assessment of the performance of current and perspective member states. This book explains and analyses questions on the dominant trends on minority rights protection at EU level, their effects on member states and their future perspectives through the prism of the recent enlargements. It begins by considering the role of the EU in minority protection and then moves on to provide a balanced approach of different possible methods to protect ethnic minorities using legal tools and principles available in EU law. It also includes case-studies that test the theoretical approaches previously described. Finally, the book concludes with an assessment of the future avenues for minority rights protection within the EU. The book's distinct perspective aims at linking the complex legal framework of accession negotiations to the more political process of conditionality. It does so by tackling a subject area that has not often been treated from a human rights perspective

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'Kyriaki Topidi [...] masters as highly complex topic. Her analysis combines a legal with a political science view rendering this book a comprehensive interdisciplinary contribution in a field of research that requires a multi-layered approach to provide profound insights.' Johannes Norpoth in the Journal of International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict 23 (2010) 211. 'Among an ever-growing academic space on the European Union's minority rights policy, Topidi's EU Law, Minorities and Enlargement adds value by analysing EU minority rights protection in the context of enlargement in its own right. [...] The conclusions drawn [...] are significant for the advancement of the academic understanding of the European Union's minority rights policy. [...]The conclusions of the book as a whole and each chapter individually certainly add to the knowledge in its field.' Tawhida Ahmed in E.L.Rev. 36 (2011) 606. About the author Dr Kyriaki Topidi is a lecturer and senior researcher at the School of Law, University of Lucerne.

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Dr. Kyriaki Topidi is a lecturer and senior researcher at the School of Law, University of Lucerne.

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