Regions, Minorities and European Integration (special issue)

The questions that this issue addresses cut across some of the most challenging dilemmas of the European Union. The emergence of the European supra-state was presumed to signify an end to modernity. In the new postmodern world the nation state was supposed to fade due to increased cosmopolitanism, international rules to prevail over narrowly defined territorial ones, global issues to overshadow local petty interest. In this respect, the Sixth Framework Project “EUROREG” reported in this issue surveys a crucial test area of this postmodern attempt: how Europe and European accession affects the dynamics of the relations between ethnic minorities and majorities, between minorities-inhabited regions and the nation states they are part of.