News from ECMI InfoChannel

On Wednesday, 30 October 2020, the ECMI Director Vello Pettai and Senior Researcher Ljubica Djordjević paid a visit to the State Parliament of Schleswig-Holstein. The ECMI was invited to participate in the meeting of the Committee for European Affairs (Committee for Federal and European Affairs, Cooperation in the Baltic Sea and North Sea Area, and Minorities).

Returning to a non-kin state setting for our eighth interview in the ongoing series, Onno Falkena details the case of Frisian in the Netherlands. A seasoned journalist for regional public broadcaster Omrop Fryslân in the province of Fryslân / Friesland, Onno is well-positioned to provide first-hand experience of the situation during the lockdown months earlier this year.

From 8-11 September 2020, ENTAN – The European Non-Territorial Autonomy Network (www.entan.org) will hold its first Training School in Flensburg and Sønderborg, co-organized by the Centre of Border Region Studies of the University of Southern Denmark, the European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI) and the Interdisciplinary Centre for European Studies at the Europa-Universität Flensburg.

The seventh interview in our ongoing series sees Dr. Jenny Stenberg-Sirén detailing the case of Swedish in Finland. With vast experience as an academic and a journalist, Dr. Stenberg-Sirén is able to provide an extensive analysis of the Swedish language media in Finland, which includes national public TV and radio, as well as a large array of daily newspapers.

The important role of the ECMI in the German-Danish border region was acknowledged by being selected as one of the few institutions visited by the President of the Schleswig-Holstein Parliament Klaus Schlie and the Minister-President Daniel Günther on their tour in the border region. The two-day summer trip was held due to the occasion of the 100^th anniversary of the plebescites which led to the border demarcation between Germany and Denmark

The tenth edition of the Annual Summer School on National Minorities and Border Regions co-organized by the ECMI and Coppieters Foundation has been officially opened and is now running. The participants arrived safely in Flensburg yesterday and were welcomed by the Summer School Team during the introductory meeting at the ECMI Headquarters.

The German minority in Denmark is the focus of the sixth post in our ongoing expert interview series on minority language media and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Chief Editor of Der Nordschleswiger, Gwyn Nissen, gives us an insightful overview of the situation for the German minority’s daily newspaper and its online news site, and the mixed effects the pandemic has had and is having. 

Our fifth interview on minority language media (MLM) during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic focuses again on a case in Spain, with Prof. Dr. Aida Martori Muntsant (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) discussing the situation of Catalan language media in Catalonia. An MLM sphere with a substantial array of institutions including many local TV and radio stations as well as and print and online newspapers, the situation for Catalan media was nonetheless greatly affected by the pandemic. 

We return to the Celtic linguistic sphere for our fourth post on the situation of minority language media (MLM) during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. John Walsh, Senior Lecturer in Irish at the National University of Ireland in Galway, details the case of Irish language media on the island of Ireland. Dr. Walsh begins by comprehensively outlining the various TV, radio, print and social media which operate in the Irish language, as well as a brief history of their development.  

In the third interview of the new series discussing the situation of minority language media (MLM) during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Miren Manias-Muñoz (University of the Basque Country) presents the case of MLM in Basque Country and Navarre. Spain has been particularly harshly affected by the pandemic, with its repercussions spilling over to MLM outlets as well. Production of radio and television content was halted, programmes well-liked by the audience were cancelled, while newspapers’ economic situation worsened even with readership increasing. Besides this, broader trends concerning broadcasters’ and local / regional authorities’ priorities further complicate the picture. 

In the second interview of our new series focused on minority language media during the COVID-19 pandemic, Marc Röggla (EURAC Research / Midas), discusses the case of German and Ladin language media in the Autonomous Province of Bolzano, South Tyrol in Italy. Officially trilingual, there are an array of media institutions producing content through different mediums, yet, as Marc explains, despite a general increase in media consumption during the recent crisis there has been a significant drop in revenues due to reduced advertising income. Marc outlines the implications of this trend for the broader MLM landscape in Europe as well, from his unique perspective as a scholar and practitioner.

In a further move to strengthen its integration within the German-Danish border region, the ECMI has participated as a founding member in the creation of the Minority Competence Network of Schleswig-Holstein and Southern Denmark. The Network has been spearheaded by the Commissioner for National Minority Affairs in Schleswig-Holstein, Johannes Callsen, as a project development forum for the entire German-Danish region.

In the first of a new series of expert interviews in the field of minority language media across Europe, Prof. Elin Haf Gruffydd Jones of the University of Wales Trinity Saint David provides an in-depth overview of Welsh media during the COVID-19 pandemic. As she explains, Welsh language media organizations have acted quickly during COVID-19 to inform and connect communities across Wales. New conversations, content and groups have been created on social media in Welsh too. But faced with the impending economic downturn, exacerbated by Brexit, there are challenging times ahead for the sector.