The Role of NGOs in Promoting Minority Rights in the Enlarged European Union

Abstract In the field of minority protection, several concepts have been utilized to explain domestic change – like policy transfer, norm diffusion and emulation – to name only a few. But how and why have some EU policies been transferred and others not? Why do accession countries introduce antidiscrimination laws but at the same time undermine individual or collective minority rights in the (post-) enlargement process? When looking for variables of successful EU conditionality in the field of minority policy, the role of non-state actors and advocacy group influence is often neglected in the Europeanization literature. Thus, the article examines and compares the impact of NGO advocacy in the EU enlargement process with a focus on Roma policy. EU enlargement shows that compliance with EU norms can be enforced through transnational advocacy networks (TANs), lobbying on behalf of an ethnic minority. While in non-discrimination, a causal relationship between the advocacy of intermediary institutions and policy reform can be detected, NGOs seem to have less influence on special minority rights. Moreover, the emergence of TANs formed around the issue of the Roma demonstrates that advocacy groups appear to substitute other ‘norm entrepreneurs’ like kin states or minority parties.