National minorities political rights in the context of decentralization of power in the Eastern European countries

Abstract

The question of political minorities rights is always crucial for European countries because of mutual history and border changes. Almost each of these countries are characterized by small groups of ethnic minorities who are living in boarding areas. Some representatives of these ethnic groups have separatistic points of view during the years. In some European countries situation becomes even more complicated because of assimilation policy which was provided by the former Soviet Union.

Decentralization is transferring of authorities to the local levels what is other serious accelerator of the questions of political minorities rights. The question of our research work is if the impact of decentralization process matches political minorities rights in Eastern Europe? In the present study we analyze the results of administrative and territorial reforms in Poland, the Czech Republic , Slovakia and we also took into consideration the impact of ethnic factor within new administrative and territorial division.

In conclusions author emphasizes that in Eastern Europe new division process mostly happened without taking into account historical areas where small groups of political minorities lived. Author also draws our attention to the possible separatism, which can be the reason of articulation of national minorities will, who live near the borders to other countries as to unite in some areas.

Keywords: Decentralization of authority, administrative-territorial reform, post-socialist transformation, minorities, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia