Regions in the Process of European Integration

Characterization by Territory and Ethnicity

Abstract

We have witnessed in contemporary Europe the development of decentralization in nation-states, and at the European level, the improvement of the status of a sub-national region as a political actor by, for example, the creation of the Committee of the Regions by Maastricht Treaty. The region, in many cases, has characteristics as a geographical territory and at the same time as a stage on which a political ethnic movement (ethnoregionalism) progresses (the region is a homeland for the ethnic entity). This paper insists on this duality of characterization of European regions by territory and ethnicity.
When we see the process itself of decentralization in European countries, there are a variety of ways or degrees of state reform: central governmental power stays rather strong in France on one hand, Belgium has been transformed into a federal state on the other. But it is certain, in spite of the differences of the process, that the European states as a whole are inclined toward decentralization, where ethnoregionalism plays an important role as the main power for the quest for the region's territorial autonomy or independence.
From the European point of view, we can state that regional authorities have growing power in favor of politics and cultures of their own. This change in power is obvious especially in the EU and the Council of Europe where the regions can obtain considerable support owing to development of the European organizations, which supply them with official status so as to speak for their own interests (ex. Committee of the Regions of the EU), and the European framework for saving and promoting ethnic minorities' cultures elaborated by the Council of Europe's works, such as the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages or the Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, which contribute to gradually forming an international regime by which states are forced to make concessions to ethno-regions.
In Europe today, treating a region only as a territory in the context that issues are focused on economic and administrative but not cultural aspects is not sufficient for understanding the reality of regional level politics, for in most countries regional ethnicity is an indispensable factor in both national and European politics. We have to approach regional politics with an awareness of this duality of territory and ethnicity.