Non-Territorial Cultural Autonomy in Contemporary Europe: Reflections on the Revival of an Idea

Abstract

Non-territorial cultural autonomy (NTCA) for national minorities is a concept that has elicited growing academic and political interest across Europe during the post-Cold War era. This is especially so in the post-communist East, where over the past decade and a half variants of NTCA have been adopted or actively considered in a range of states, including Estonia, Hungary, the Russian Federation, Croatia, Ukraine, and Romania. During this time, the NTCA concept has also been discussed as a possible vehicle for the cultural self-determination of ‘stateless nations’ such as the Roma (Klímová-Alexander, 2008) and has found its way onto the agenda of those international organizations — notably the OSCE and the Council of Europe — charged with the task of regulating the open and latent nationalist conflicts that continue to manifest themselves in the ‘New’ Europe (Kymlicka, 2008; Smith, 2008). Seeking to work within the framework of existing state boundaries, these bodies have promoted a new multicultural vision of nationhood that fosters integration without allowing assimilation, or, put another way, gives cultural recognition to national minorities without undermining the civic cohesion of multiethnic countries. A similar philosophy has been adopted by the European Union in its dealings with the new accession states.