Legal protection of national minorities in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland: current issues

ENThe issues pertaining to the legal protection of national minorities in North-Eastern Europe (in particular, in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) are inextricably connected with the history of the region. They are also inherent in the political environment, especially in the context of bilateral relations between Poland and Lithuania, and between Russia and the Baltic States. Traumatic experiences, filled with the enormity of the injustices that the totalitarian regimes inflicted on those countries during the Second World War, resulted in major demographic changes. The restoration of independence in the 1990s and the revival of the national identity of Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians were expressed in two main areas—citizenship regulations and language policy. Combining these tools was aimed at restoring the rightful position of the titular nations in the newly resurrected states. Political decisions made at that time have permanently defined the directions of the legal protection of national minorities in those territories. This chapter provides an overview of the recent challenges in the field of the legal protection of national minorities in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland. The focus is on the issues of minority protection in the context of Polish-Lithuanian and Russian-Baltic States relations and the current stage of inter-state dialogue on the matter. Without any doubt, domestic solutions for minority protection need to be proposed and discussed in the light of regional and international legal frameworks, including the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities of the Council of Europe. The chapter also examines other fundamental factors that impact the contemporary national minority protection systems in the region—politicisation and securitisation of ethnicity. [From the publication]

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