Deepening democracy or defending the nation? The Europeanisation of minority rights and Greek citizenship

Abstract:

This article examines the emergence of European norms and institutions of human rights and their impact on domestic policies and practices pertaining to citizenship and minorities in Greece. Since the beginning of the 1990s, with an intensification of Europeanisation processes in Greece, government policy towards minorities has undergone a process of liberalisation that culminated with the abrogation of Article 19 of the Greek Citizenship Code (GCC) in 1998, on which this article focuses. It presents an empirical analysis of the process that led to the abrogation of Article 19 of the GCC and it is primarily interested in the role European institutions played in it. Was its elimination a product of the reconfiguration of traditional Greek conceptions of citizenship and minorities, or was it an instance of instrumental change taking place within the given frame of national interests and identities?