ECMI Infochannel

In this blog piece Craig Willis investigates the contribution of European Structural and Investment Funds projects in the period between 2007-2013 and 2014-2020, in order to ascertain direct and indirect links to the four Celtic languages, following the separation of cultural funds from the ESIF into Creative Europe and Erasmus Plus from 2007. He shows that, given that the speakers of such languages often reside in economically peripheral areas (at least in higher percentage terms), their livelihoods and everyday culture in the traditional speaking areas (even for non-speakers) are affected by availability of structural funds.

The Bulgarian veto on the EU membership negotiations with North Macedonia in 2020 has once again brought to attention the identity dispute between the two nations and the implications for the accession process. At the core of the dispute lies a rather static understanding of the nation: the fact that nation is a dynamic phenomenon is almost fully ignored in the political discourse, at least on the Bulgarian side. However, bringing identity disputes and the question of national minorities’ protection to the fore is an attempt to divert the public’s attention from state weakness and the reasons behind it, such as state capture, while the EU accession process gets instrumentalized once more.