Individual, community, identity

Abstract

Our presentation investigates how Voivodina organizes the institutional means for cultures to live together. Our subject matter is the innovative Serbian method of personal autonomy: the system of national minority councils, ensuring the self-organization of cultural communities. We discuss how are NMCs useful for community members to retain their identity and how are they able to present a given collective identity. NMCs are exemplary even for the entire EU, though they also generate new conflicts between (and within) neighbouring cultural groups. We emphasise this because the European civil initiative of minority protection by FUEN (Federative Union of European Nationalities) was rejected by the European Commission. Making use of this relatively recent EU-institution, the initiators wished to oblige the European Council to regulate the issue with the document Minority Safepack Initiative (MSI). The MSI has six areas to regulate: language, educational/cultural, regional politics, presence of minorities in the EP, anti-discrimination, media regulation/support politics. The EU does have its language policy and (a not too efficient) regional policy. But there is not explicit policy to address community or personal identities. Serbia, only an applicant yet, is attempting to form specific institution (based on its own cultural variety and past), and could also serve as an example for European member countries as well, including those who will judge Serbia’s democratic maturity by the so-called Copenhagen criteria.