Recently the French minister of the interior announced that the government will begin talks with Corsican representatives aiming to agree upon the autonomy of Corsica. This move is probably related to the situation in Ukraine, where national minorities played a significant role in the outbreak of the conflict. Even though ethnic and national minority issues have created severe turbulence in the past century, they are often swept under the carpet.
The United States—as the leading country in the world in the field of peace, stability and human rights—should be aware of Europe's ethnic/national minorities issues in order to prevent conflicts that arise from them. In this context the European situation is of utmost importance for the U.S., too.
As a result of history, the territories of European countries do not coincide perfectly with the lands where nations live. Some are spread beyond the borders of their nation states. These communities have minority status even though they have been living in their native lands for centuries. At present more than 50 million people (more than 10 percent of the population) in the European Union are members of autochthonous national minorities; in fact, there is such a minority community in almost every member state.
In order to manage the problems that threaten to erase many of Europe's ethnic/national minorities, the concept of the nation state needs to be revised, considering that the era of exclusionist nation states is at an end.
The full article can be viewed here.
