Minority Protection Policies and EU Competence in Bulgaria: A Comparative Analysis of Turks and Roma People

Abstract

This article assesses the impact of Europeanization on the minority protection policies in Bulgaria. The diffusion of European norms into European Union and the declaration of the Copenhagen Criteria in 1993 marked the respect for minority rights as a condition for EU membership, which is defined as part of the “acquis communitaire” of the European Union.^[1] In this paper, I ask “which domestic factors lead to the Europeanization of minority policies” to analyze the impact of Europeanization on the minority policies in Bulgaria. Utilizing the data from European Union official documents and reports from the year of official candidacy to accession, I explore the influence of the “significant institutions” and “mobilization of ethnic minorities” on the Europeanization process of minority protection rights in Bulgaria.

Keywords: ethnic minorities, Europeanization, Turks, Roma, Bulgaria

[1] Acquis communautaire is a French term meaning, the rights and obligations that EU member states share