Ensuring and protecting the rights of national minorities in the Visegrad countries (on the example of Slovakia)

Abstract

The main research objective of the study presented in this article was the ethnopolitics of the Slovak Republic, one of the V4 countries, namely the legislative base and the institutional ensuring the functioning of a system of protection of the national and ethnic minorities’ rights. Slovakia is one of the postsocialist countries that has made the transition to democracy on the way to joining the European Union. The country’s authorities conducted a series of reforms in the ethnopolitical sphere in accordance with European standards. An ethnopolitical picture and separate ethnopolitical challenges in the Slovak Republic are similar, especially in the border areas. Thus, the main goal of the ethnopolitics of Slovakia is to secure the rights of all minorities, interethnic tolerance and ensure the intercultural dialogue. Representatives of national and ethnic minorities in the Slovak Republic have a number of rights and opportunities, directly dependent on citizens whether they can organize themselves and use existing mechanisms for the benefit of their own community. In addition, the state's ethnopolitical strategy provides bilateral cooperation with the homelands of individual minorities. The bilateral cooperation between Ukraine and Slovakia is one of the examples. Bilateral cooperation between Ukraine and the Slovak Republic in the field of protection and ensuring of minority rights is based on the work of the Intergovernmental Slovak-Ukrainian Commission for National Minorities, Education and Culture. The recommendations of the commission are an important tool for constructive dialogue between Slovakia and Ukraine, ensuring good neighborly relations.

Problems of legal guarantee of educational needs of national minorities

“…Much less often scholars focus on the educational needs of members of national minorities in general. In general, the problem is addressed through studies of their legal status, cultural national autonomy, and integration problems in individual countries, in particular in Hungary (Cservák, 2018), Belarus, the Czech Republic, Poland (Grabowska and Łukasz, 2020), Great Britain (Willis, 2020), Ukraine (Toronchuk and Markovskyi, 2018), Hungary, Estonia, Serbia and Russia (Prina et al, 2019), the Visegrad Group V4 of Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia (Kichera, 2020). The problems of the formation of legal policy regarding the status of national minorities in Ukraine (Tkachenko et al, 2021) and its constitutional consolidation are relevant (Karp, 2018).…”