Volume: 26  Number: 5  Page: 453–468

Minority Language Rights Before and After the 2004 EU Enlargement: The Copenhagen Criteria in the Baltic States

Jean-Bernard Adrey Centre for European and International Studies Research (CEISR), University of Porstmouth, Southsea, Portsmouth, UK

This paper examines the effect of the recent European Union (EU) enlargement on minority language policies in the Baltic states, and in particular in Latvia and Estonia. I first look at the so-called Copenhagen political criteria conditioning EU accession and at the European Commission's monitoring system for assessing applicant countries' compliance with such criteria. Focusing on changing language policies in Latvia and Estonia in the post-Soviet era, I then investigate whether accession negotiations between these countries and the Commission have resulted in defining new thresholds of minority language protection both domestically and in the EU. If so, have such minority rights standards become an acquis communautaire and could they then be applied to ‘older’ member states in retrospect?

Keywords: accession conditionality, Copenhagen criteria, enlargement, language rights, minority rights

© 2005 J-B. Adrey

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