Opinions and statements

Bledar Bašanović

Member of the State Committee for National Minorities of the Republic of Albania

Representative of the Serbian – Montenegrin National Minority

Nationalism, minorities and the European integration

In a time of social apathy, isolation and a collective resistance to the sensibilization of the society about the need to adapt the most positive attitudes, norms and standards of the Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms, including those belonging to the marginalized groups such as minorities, as a reaction directed to the Advocacy for the exercise of these rights, parts of our society are losing tolerance and simulate the feeling of vulnerability of the ethnic majority population of the national minorities as an argument for negative actions towards these minorities, the distraction from everyday problems or the use for political purposes of patriotic pride that characterizes the ethnic majority in Albania .Methods and its planning is often too long, is not known to the public and uses the same tools that are actually designed for the general public interest and that foster the implementation of the rights and liberties of those minorities. Instruments such as the Census, which was implemented in 2011 as a declaration of unconstitutional notion of nationality in the Law on Registers of the Constitutional Court are typical examples of abusive positive instruments for the reduction of opportunities for self-identification of National Minorities.
The so-called threshold that produced a single unacknowledged result of the number of minorities and their propagation, did not accept the request of national minorities to each respondent issued a copy of the responses to the questionnaire on ethnicity for the use of entitlement arising from the law. On the other hand, only a month later, the right of the documents acquired by the ethnicity of the citizens was declared unconstitutional. In this way, although the proof of nationality in Albania is the “conditio sine qua non” for example to realize, in practice effectively equal participation of persons belonging to national minorities in public life and in employment, prevents the identification and comparison of numerical relations of the current representation in government structures. And the introduction of teaching in minority languages is conditioned by the obligation to prove through documentation on the national origin of the people who want their children to learn their mother tongue and the language of the minority. From this point of view, this disabling proving nationality created by persons belonging to national minorities to exercise their statutory rights and in their mother countries of citizenship or receiving Social Assistance by their kin state with the right to have a requirement to prove such facts through official documents issued by the Albanian state.

The boycott of national minorities in the process of preparing the legal framework of the so-called Census if and advocacy in the articles of the Civil Registry of nationality (the defense of the members of the law before the Constitutional Court was done without consultation with the representatives of national minorities ), leads us to reflect on the factors that have led to this state, whether it was planning to this processes or how it is possible to easily pass through such changes in the law parliamentary procedure and received tremendous support during the elections. As we know , the notorious procedures of the census, which provide an administrative offense of free expression of individuals other than the data in the registers , which are proposed instead of the original provision of the Government to suspend the punishment of any contrary self-declaration , as suggested by small parties of a great nationalist intensity . It is natural that the question is, how did it happen that, in the drafting process of the test of the parliamentary majority changed the Bill the government that is elected by the same majority and the conditions of one of the parties represented in Parliament with only two members? On the other hand, the process of abolishing the law of nationality which was initiated in order to prevent the democratic process rights of a member of an ethnic minority to be heard as such, was the initiative of the Red and Black Alliance, a nationalist movement, whose leader was for many years one of the highest authority on the field of justice, the Chair of the Supreme Council of Justice. On the other hand, the Constitutional Court was composed exclusively of judges belonging to the ethnic majority, and who were elected by the same majority in the Parliament.
At this point we are faced with frequent criticism from international institutions that monitor the implementation of the rights and freedoms of national minorities and to assess the degree of progress that has been made. The decision for candidate status for the European Union to Albania , which is expected in June 2014 represents the highest expectations as “the need for further efforts in the area of respect for the law, including the protection of human rights and the implementation of non-discriminatory policies, including minorities and their equal treatment” and indicating among other things the need for SANAS damage through brave applicable legal and institutional actions of the Albanian state in this direction . Positive assessments and potentially receiving the status of a candidate country for the European Union will be here very soon if our European partners see that it is working to build mutual ethnic and inter-institutional trust between ethnic minorities and the majority. Measures such as the construction of an adequate legal framework on minorities that will be similar to what others in the region have , to create space for the operation of national minorities in each area and encouraging the process of integration of ethnic minorities in all government structures are necessary steps towards achieving our integration objectives . However, all this requires political will, which will exclude any influence of nationalist, for the sake of the highest national interest of European integration.