Minority rights

Greece's candidacies as non-permanent member of the UN Security Council (2025-26) and as member of the Human Rights Council (2028-2030) will focus on close collaboration with all countries and UN mechanisms to safeguard human rights, Foreign Minister George Gerapatritis said during his address at the 55th UN Human Rights Council session in Geneva on Wednesday.

Town mayors and mid-level politicians are still getting away with hate speech and discrimination against Roma communities in three Balkan EU states, despite the bloc's commitment to minority rights.

Through policies based on respect, mutual recognition of rights and values, tolerance, dialogue and democratic representation at political and institutional level, Romania has become one of the most appreciated models for the protection of minorities' rights, says Prime Minister Ludovic Orban. "We dedicate the day of December 18 every year to celebrating the national minorities.

The president of Croatian Constitutional Court, Miroslav Separovic, announced on Friday that the court had decided that the use of the Serbian language and Cyrillic script for official purposes in the Croatian town of Vukovar should be extended.

On the second say of an official visit to Serbia on Wednesday, senior official with the Romanian Foreign Ministry (MAE) George Ciamba, also co-chair of the Romania-Serbia Joint Intergovernmental Commission for the Protection of National Minorities, met leaders of the main organisations of persons belonging to the local Romanian minority, according to a press statement released by MAE.

Foreign Affairs Minister Teodor Melescanu met on Tuesday with High Commissioner on National Minorities of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Lamberto Zannier, context in which the two officials talked about the rights of national minorities, as well as about the risk of extremist and xenophobic trends re-emerging on the European continent.

In this country, it is women - not religious dignitaries - who decide on whether to have children.

This is according to the chair of the Serbian National Assembly Committee on Human and Minority Rights, Meho Omerovic, who reacted on Wednesday.

The Albanian parliament passed a law for the protection of minorities in the country during a session late Friday night. With 102 in favour and 10 against out of a total of 140, the neighbouring county’s MPs passed the relevant law for the first time in its history after it became a democracy following the fall of the communist regime.

Besides not having any added value in its content, the new bill on national minorities in Albania marks a step back.
This was declared today by the head of the Unity for Human Rights Party, Vangelis Dule in the debates that are taking place in Parliament on this bill, in response to the fact that the Albanian Foreign Minister, Ditmir Bushati and PM Edi Rama championed the bill.

Albania is expected to adopt a new law on minorities in mid-October that gives them more rights in line with the best international standards.

The draft law was presented as a joint document of four ministries after a working group worked on it for almost three years.