News from ECMI InfoChannel

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.

The European Centre for Minority Issues welcomes potential applicants for Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowship (MSCA-IF) to contact its staff for advice and support in completing their application. The ECMI welcomes applications in all areas related to researching minority issues. Fellows can come from a wide variety of disciplines. Applicants should think first about which cluster their research topic might best fit into, and then contact the relevant cluster head for a consultation

The First Training School on Non-Territorial Autonomy will take place in Flensburg and Sønderborg on 9-11 September 2020 (3 working days). The School is hosted by the University of Southern Denmark, Department of Political Science and Public Management in partnership with Europa-Universität Flensburg, and the ECMI. Applications can be submitted until 5 July 2020.

Last week ECMI Senior Researcher Ljubica Djordjević participated in the online conference Boosting European Security Law and Policy, which was the final event of the BeSEC project. BeSEC is a Jean-Monnet project led by the Law Department of the University of Siena in cooperation with the ECMI, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, and the Matej Bel University. The Project has now come to its final phase as it will end in August 2020 after two years of successful implementation. 

The ECMI has started a new series of video interviews called ECMI Conversations with Experts. ECMI Conversations with Experts are a series of monthly video interviews between a prominent expert in the field of minority issues and a researcher from the European Centre for Minority Issues. 

The European Centre for Minority Issues and the University of Leicester have initiated the project ‘Marginality on the Margins of Europe – The Impact of COVID-19 on Roma Communities in Non-EU Countries in Eastern Europe’.  

The aim of the project is to map the overall impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Roma communities in a range of non-EU countries in Eastern Europe (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Moldova, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Ukraine). To date, no reliable data is available, although there are reasons to suspect this minority group might be particularly vulnerable to the effects of the pandemic and of the measures implemented to contain it. 

The Black Lives Matter movement is currently seeing unprecedented support across the globe. On June 6, rallies, marches and protests took place in cities and towns around the world, including here in Flensburg, just metres away from ECMI Headquarters. This movement addresses not only the problems of police violence against Black people in the US, but also systemic racism in state institutions internationally, including throughout Europe. This is a time when we must all confront the historical legacy of white supremacy as well as the contemporary reality of racism that besets many of the nations we live in.

The ECMI held an interactive two-day webinar on Friday 5th and Saturday 6th June, involving 18 university students of the MA European Studies and BA European Cultures and Society programmes of Europa-Universität Flensburg. The students are normally based in the Flensburg area but originating from across Europe and beyond. Thanks to the online webinar format of the Spring School, even the students who are currently back in their home countries unable to travel due to the COVID-19 related travel bans could fully participate in the event. 

The on-going COVID-19 pandemic has become a major focus of discussion in different public forums and media programmes. At the same time, it has shifted the attention of many organisations to the online space as the main platform for dissemination and communication. Staff at the ECMI have been invited to participate in a number of high-profile online events in order to comment on how the virus has affected national minorities.

Continuing a series of introductory meetings with key strategic partners of the ECMI, Director Vello Pettai met on 13 May with the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities, Amb. Lamberto Zannier. Although obliged to stick to a Flensburg-The Hague video conference due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, the meeting was extremely productive, highlighting several key areas where the ECMI could contribute to the HCNM’s work both thematically and geographically.

Despite the restrictions caused by COVID-19, the ECMI continues to work on various projects and future strategic and research planning. A new strengthened research area of the Centre focusing on minority issues in the German-Danish border region has been one of the priorities of the new director. Until recently, the ECMI statutes did not allow the Centre to research minority issues in the region in which it is based. The statutes have been recently changed by the founders so that this new research initiative can be developed. 

We have extended the deadline for abstract submission for the special issue of JEMIE titled “Minorities, European Security and Securitisation of Group Relations: Approaching Security from a Minor Perspective”.

* * * Deadline for abstracts extended until 15th May 2020 * * *

The Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe (JEMIE) is a peer-reviewed electronic journal edited under the auspices of the ECMI. The multi-disciplinary journal addresses minority issues across a broad range of studies.