The European Union seems blissfully unaware that community rights are a vital component of individual freedom.
Bad news shares a feature: today’s festering sores began as neglected pickles. An issue that might upset Europe in the future flows from a casually committed earlier global error. Colonial empires and the treaties ending the world wars have created states with artificial boundaries. These deals ignored the foundations of good and stable settlements: these leave all parties relatively satisfied. A stable state has consenting inhabitants who have reasons to see it as representing them. It helps if the populace is ethnically, by faith and culture homogenous. Ignoring this created contemporary problems such as in Iraq and Africa. Recent symptoms include the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia (actually a Greater Serbia) and the still fermenting issue of Kosovo. Historically, the origins of the world wars were states seen as prisons by their subjects and the territorial rivalries this fueled.
The international community is committed to upholding the territorial integrity of its members. Unfortunately, this prevents minorities locked into “foreign” states from getting attention and makes it easy to react to the signs of creeping crises by ignoring them. The more so, since the underlying problems are complicated and inconvenient to discuss. Furthermore, accepted prejudices, as well as the desire for tranquility are interpreted as demanding silence.
Sanctified by US President Wilson — but ignoring his real program – under French leadership the victors of WWI reorganized central Europe. In the process, Hungary lost two-thirds of its territory and population to successor states. Some of these losses, while counteracting historical claims but by responding to ethnic realities, were legitimate and enjoyed popular consent. However, the new arrangements created large local Magyar majorities separated by a new border from their kin. The result: instability of use only to Mussolini, then Hitler and ultimately Stalin.
The great dictators – and their local minions – benefited because the successor states — today Austria, Slovakia, the Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia – were not national states. They held a suspected minority and therefore had an enemy within. This insecurity still sets limits to democratization. To protect their existence from the assumed enemy inside, the answer is still often centralization and not pacification through a generous federalism. Ironically, the desire for protection by France, Italy, then Germany and the USSR undermined the sovereignty it was to bolster.
The decades since 1919, also the collapse of regional great powers (1991), has changed the demographic situation and altered aspirations as well as the possibilities available.
Regarding Austria and Slovenia, but also Croatia and the Ukraine, there is no serious “Magyar question.” Nor does the issue exist in Hungary itself. She dropped revisionism long ago and wishes to secure the collective rights of Magyars within existing states. Still, discrimination by their hosting states is a reality for hundreds of thousands of Magyars in Slovakia, Romania and Serbia. Looking away — which is also the policy of Hungary’s current rulers – is not solving the problem. The first bomb to explode will make the point. Clearly, regrettably and belatedly.
The Magyars, who are not the only problem-minority in Europe and outside it, ask for less than what some comparable groups demand. This lends the solution the character of an applicable precedent that transcends the fate of ten or fourteen million Hungarians. It is suited to reduce ethnic dissatisfaction without undermining existing sates or the international order. At the same time, it assigns to international organizations, such as the EU, a significant role.
Magyar demands are based on the assertion that community rights are a component of personal rights. Autonomy (not independence) for provinces, districts and communities follow. Based on language, religion and a sense of belonging, local government with a say in finances, development, education and the free use of local idioms, is to be the upshot. Accordingly, boundaries between states are not to be used to punish those “on the wrong side.” Their significance for the life of individuals should be what the Lichtenstein-Swiss border means to those that share backyards along it. Significantly, autonomy is long-standing practice for Swedes in Finland or Austrians in “Südtirol,” Flamands in Belgium and in Switzerland in the case of the Rumuntsch, Italians, French and the Alemanic Germans. Therefore, while the principle might be revolutionary to some unenlightened rulers and their parties, the examples demonstrate that the concept does not undermine implementing states.
Theoretically, the European Union’s federal features offer a framework to overcome the old issues that still divide its newest members. Recent entrants have formally committed themselves to constructive policies. The reduction of the significance of political boundaries is officially a special endeavor of the community. The hindrance blocking the solution of the problem is simple to identify — but not easy to overcome.
A missed opportunity complicates matters. Admission should have included as a precondition the enforced implementation of the kind of minority rights that candidates needed to adhere to verbally. Accepting promises in lieu of deeds created the impression that the EU is not really interested. Even now, not all is lost if Brussels does not collude to ignore grievances. Investigating these and sanctioning violations will bring results. Naturally, the EU may subordinate the community’s principles and those of good governance to pacifying chauvinists. However, these will interpret the lenience, meant to give time for a natural healing process, as consent. Giving in will keep the hardliners on the national question happy while aggravating long-term problems. The EU has excellent cards to resolve old problems among its new members. Alas, its preferred pusillanimity in dealing with global issues support the fear that the existing opportunity will not be converted into new solutions.
handlery@sunrise.ch
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