EU Enlargement in Eastern Europe

1
EU Enlargement in Eastern Europe

• Week 8

2
Is Cultural Diversity Sustainable?

• What is the EU stance?
• Who ensures compliance?
• What are potential outcomes?

3
EU Charter of Fundamental Rights

• Sets out in a single text the whole range of
• Civil
• Political
• Economic
• Social rights
• of European citizens and all persons resident in
  the EU.

4
The Rights

• These rights are divided into six sections
• Dignity
• Freedoms
• Equality
• Solidarity
• Citizens' rights
• Justice

5
Derivation of the Rights

• Based on
• Fundamental rights and freedoms recognised by the
  European Convention on Human Rights
• Constitutional traditions of the EU Member States
• Council of Europe's Social Charter
• Community Charter of Fundamental Social Rights of
  Workers
• Other international conventions to which the
  European Union or its Member States are parties

6
Discrimination

• Article 20
• Equality before the law
• Everyone is equal before the law.
• Article 21
• Non-discrimination
• 1. Any discrimination based on any ground such as
  sex, race, colour, ethnic or social origin,
  genetic features, language, religion or belief,
  political or any other opinion, membership of a
  national minority,
• property, birth, disability, age or sexual
  orientation shall be prohibited.
• 2. Within the scope of application of the Treaty
  establishing the European Community and of the
  Treaty on European Union, and without prejudice
  to the special provisions of those Treaties, any
  discrimination on grounds of nationality shall be
  prohibited.

7
Discrimination

• Article 22
• Cultural, religious and linguistic diversity
• The Union shall respect cultural, religious and
  linguistic diversity.

8
Enforcement

• Article 51
• Scope
• 1. The provisions of this Charter are addressed
  to the institutions and bodies of the Union with
  due regard for the principle of subsidiarity and
  to the Member States only when they are
  implementing Union law. They shall therefore
  respect the rights, observe the principles and
  promote the application thereof in accordance
  with their respective powers.
• 2. This Charter does not establish any new power
  or task for the Community or the Union, or modify
  powers and tasks defined by the Treaties.

9
Enforcement

• Article 52
• Scope of guaranteed rights
• 1. Any limitation on the exercise of the rights
  and freedoms recognised by this Charter must be
  provided for by law and respect the essence of
  those rights and freedoms. Subject to the
  principle of proportionality, limitations may be
  made only if they are necessary and genuinely
  meet objectives of general interest recognised by
  the Union or the need to protect the rights and
  freedoms of others.

10
Specific Cases Gender in Labour Policy

• Regulations in gender regimes tell us what is the
  role of women in the society.
• In Nordic countries gender regulations are
  concrete measures
• In the Southern regions of Europe gender
  regulations are only a strategy or a goal for
  some other field of policy.
• On the EU level gender regulations have a strong
  tradition.
• In Nordic countries women have had traditionally
  a strong role in working life and in labour
  relations where as in Germany for instance mens
  role as the supporters of family has been more
  important. Therefore when the union considers
  different employment models it faces different
  cultural backgrounds and values.
• The EU will most probably take direction to
  German model of labour policies and regulations
  in the future

11
Specific Cases - Religion

• European Union draft constitution says the Union
  is founded on the values of "respect for human
  dignity, liberty, democracy and respect for
  human rights."
• But the draft does not explicitly mention God or
  the region's Christian traditions.

12
Specific Cases - Religion

• France and Spain for exclusion
• Poland against exclusion
• "To reflect the social realities of its people,
  the EU must be institutionally separate from the
  religious communities. But in many questions of
  moral values it can refer to these communities,
  work together with them or bear in mind the
  societal effect of their conscience-building
  activities.
• Hungarian Archbishop Peter Erdö

13
Specific Cases Cultural Traditions

• 1 October 2003
• The European Commission today condemned the
  forced marriage of 12-year-old Romany girl in
  Romania, and said Bucharest should have acted to
  stop the marriage.
• The Romany girl tried to flee the arranged
  marriage over the weekend, but was forced to go
  through with the wedding by her father, the
  self-proclaimed king of the Gypsies (Roma).
• Although the couple was under the legal age of
  sexual consent and marriage, Bucharest
  authorities did not stop the event. But they
  later opened an inquiry into whether the girl was
  the victim of statutory rape.
• EU Social Affairs Commissioner Anna
  Diamantopoulou today said that Romania's EU
  ambitions mean it must maintain high standards of
  human rights. She said that when traditions and
  human rights clash, rights must prevail.

14
European Academy

• Consider
• If economic integration is proceeding
  relentlessly, driven by the introduction of the
  euro and by pan-European marketing.
• Can individual cultures survive and flourish amid
  these powerful commercializing and standardizing
  impulses?

15
European Academy - Findings

• EU law has not yet "found a solid balance"
  between unity (meaning support for the common
  market) and diversity, in terms of support for
  cultures and languages.
• The issue of diversity and minority rights will
  grow in importance with the expansion of the
  European Union.
• This will be the challenge of the coming years,
  especially with the Eastern enlargement, which
  will bring in so much more diversity.
• Followed by the migration pressure coming up only
  now in the next 10 years which also brings
  diversity.

16
European Academy - Findings

• The concept of the nation-state per se is
  actually an enemy to diversity, because the
  nation-state starts from the presumption that to
  have a strong linkage between the citizen and the
  state, you have to create the idea that there is
  homogeneity in the people of the state

17
European Academy - Findings

• One way to preserve diversity and also to protect
  minority cultures is through a more regionalized
  system, at least in cases where culture is based
  on territory
• Does not apply to a dispersed minority, like the
  Roma, for whom the concept of territorial
  autonomy is not relevant
• What is interesting is that if you have a state
  which starts regionalizing you see that the
  regional entity has much more sympathy to the
  European level than the national level has
• For example, if you look at Wales, or the
  Scottish, or the Catalans, they are all very
  pro-European, because they see in the European
  level a new mode of identifying, apart from the
  classic nationhood link

18
European Academy - Findings

• Ensure that EU law avoids placing limits on
  diversity at the European level
• European Commission could propose legislation
  calling for any planned measures to be examined
  to ensure they did not diminish diversity in
  Europe
• What the EU cannot do is impose measures on
  member states to make them more diverse

19
The Opposing View

• Contribution of culture to strengthening social
  cohesion
• Preserving cultural diversity
• Knowledge of other "regions and peoples" through
  increased awareness of cultural diversity
  increases citizens' interest in European issues
  which can serve as a basis for the building of
  the new Europe.
• Ensure that cultural differences do not provoke
  disharmony but instead become an instrument for
  strengthening and uniting people in a
  multicultural, multilingual Europe, based on
  solidarity.
• Conference on Cultural Diversity Europe's Wealth
• 17 October 2003 Graz
• Speech given by Mr. Henning Jensen

20
Possible Outcomes Policy Level

• It is an irony of this top-down process of
  regional formation, moreover, that a key goal of
  creating structures able to absorb EU
  cohesion/structural funds has not been achieved,
  since the same centralising spirit that hampered
  decentralisation is also stalling the creation of
  regions that the EU will consider competent to
  receive substantial funding.
• Sub-national levels of administration are not
  consulted at the centre by all accounts, and
  remain distinctly unprepared for EU entry, and
  yet it will be these levels which will bear the
  main responsibility for the implementation of new
  legislation in entirely new areas. As reports on
  this area have show, moreover, most regional
  community level organisations lack integrated
  information about the changes that will occur in
  their jurisdictions as they relate to the EU.
• The Changing Power of the State in Eastern Europe
• Abby Innes

21
Possible Outcomes Personal Level

• The 21 Configuration of Europe
• the incorporation of East European states into
  the EU, from a cultural point of view, has
  greater potential for the deepening of European
  integration than for its erosion.
• Applicant states from the EU are moving towards
  full membership in what can be called the 21
  configuration of Europe.
• This leads us to the conclusion that in the
  emerging European quasi-states all socially
  mobile Europeans must be fluent in the
  continental language, English. Obviously they
  must
• also be fluent in the state language in which
  they live, so biligualism (the 2 of 21) is
  becoming a European standard.

22
Possible Outcomes Personal Level

• Despite the diversity of the national and
  nationality cultures that characterise the EU
  states there is an emergent cultural
  configuration that represents a common European
  cultural sphere. Despite this diversity between
  nations there exists a coherent cultural system
  that enables most Europeans to act appropriately
  according to both local and European standards
  within the European Union.
• There is an emerging lingua franca used parallel
  with state languages and besides, there are
  protected minority languages.
• In religion the accepted European norm is to
  support secular Christianity, respecting national
  churches and the minority religious groups.