Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MINOTEE (Minority Rights – Towards Effective European Enforcement)
Reporting period: 2023-09-01 to 2025-08-31
MINOTEE studied the potential role of collective redress (a legal instrument that allows facilitated aggregation of claims in a single procedure) in the field of minority rights enforcement in Europe and in studying its impact with an approach from political science (ethnic bargaining theory) specifically designed to chart the success of minority claim-making and conducting the first systemic study of the potentials for minority rights. The research drew on two areas in particular: (1) There has been increased interest in collective enforcement in Europe, with the adoption of a collective redress instrument in EU consumer protection law or in thinking how to address large scale violations before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) with the improvement of the pilot judgment system. The goals and logic of procedural combination of claims is applicable to the minority rights field: like in the case of environment or consumer protection, the idea is to gain leverage by lumping together dispersed claims against more powerful actors who would otherwise ride free on legal violations. (2) Models of ethnic bargaining study perceptions of relative power positions, including the effects of external actors and institutions. This makes the approach perfect for studying the possible impact of claims aggregation aided by European norm-setting. MINOTEE set out to assess if law, through aggregating claims, can support empowerment in minority rights mobilization.
Domestic minority-relevant cases where studied in three jurisdictions (Slovakia, Hungary, Romania), out of which two jurisdictions (Slovakia, Hungary) were selected for inclusion in the pilot database of domestic judgments. Metadata was created (country, court, date, topic, concerned minority), the judgments were summarized along predefined criteria (claim, procedural outcome, outcome, holding), links were inserted to the original judgments (in official national judicial databases) and to related judgments within the database. Crucially, all included judgments were translated to English (software-aided and manually checked) and provided as a PDF to facilitate research. The database was published online at https://ir.ceu.edu/cases-table(opens in new window) and long-term public repository placement is being prepared.
Interviews were conducted with key legal experts responsible for legal strategies and case preparation in the region, completed with legal analysis of forms of procedures available in European jurisdictions, covering overlaps and discrepancies regarding standing rules, appeals and other remedies, and costs. Specific areas were selected for deeper study, like child removal from minority families. While such cases recurrently appear in European litigation, the equality aspect hardly considered in cases before the European Court of Human Rights. Applying comparative legal methods and studying domestic litigation showed how representative action can expand the ability of law to tackle systemic inequalities. Seminars and a workshop brought together experts working with collective redress type mechanisms in different fields to see how minority issues relate to other areas like climate change litigation or redress for public law violations.
Given the rule-of-law challenges presented by backsliding in some of the selected jurisdictions, dedicated analysis covered whether and how collective redress procedures and mass damages can provide additional constitutional checks where traditional institutional guarantees break down. Based on information from expert interviews, Roma school desegregation cases in Mitrovica (Kosovo) were studied to assess the impact of institutional-jurisdictional competition and political sensitivity on minority rights enforcement. While overlapping jurisdictions as a result of competing sovereignty claims is unique, the broader lessons apply more broadly and show the importance of maintaining alternative venues for raising equality claims which includes private enforcement through collective redress.
Interviews were conducted with key legal experts responsible for legal strategies and case preparation in the region, completed with legal analysis of forms of procedures available in European jurisdictions, covering overlaps and discrepancies regarding standing rules, appeals and other remedies, and costs. Specific areas were selected for deeper study, like child removal from minority families. While such cases recurrently appear in European litigation, the equality aspect hardly considered in cases before the European Court of Human Rights. Applying comparative legal methods and studying domestic litigation showed how representative action can expand the ability of law to tackle systemic inequalities. Seminars and a workshop brought together experts working with collective redress type mechanisms in different fields to see how minority issues relate to other areas like climate change litigation or redress for public law violations.
Given the rule-of-law challenges presented by backsliding in some of the selected jurisdictions, dedicated analysis covered whether and how collective redress procedures and mass damages can provide additional constitutional checks where traditional institutional guarantees break down. Based on information from expert interviews, Roma school desegregation cases in Mitrovica (Kosovo) were studied to assess the impact of institutional-jurisdictional competition and political sensitivity on minority rights enforcement. While overlapping jurisdictions as a result of competing sovereignty claims is unique, the broader lessons apply more broadly and show the importance of maintaining alternative venues for raising equality claims which includes private enforcement through collective redress.
The research studied concrete claims, through an extensive review of existing minority rights cases, interviews with stakeholders, and legal analysis of types of legal procedures (individual, representative, collective forms) to assess systematically how collective redress would affect minority claim-making. It looked at existing procedural rules and the tension with legal strategies that seek to cover broader sets of claims, especially pro-minority litigation addressing systemic inequalities, e.g. the mass complaints project of the European Roma Rights Centre aiming at legal empowerment of Roma communities in the region. The study of the forced removal of children from Roma families provides the first comprehensive presentation of legal strategies and European jurisprudence and demonstrates that legal procedures that cover an entire set of cases work better to capture the equality aspect and systemic nature of violations. The context-sensitive assessment has shown that legal empowerment through collective redress could contribute to making legal opportunity structures sustainable and favorable to challenging systemic barriers to equality. The research has broken new ground by presenting collective redress and mass damages as potential tools to address democratic backsliding, in that they could counterbalance fading institutional safeguards against systemic violations that fall particularly heavily on various minority groups, including ethno-national and political minorities.