News archive

The Official Gazette of Romania published recently a citizens' legislative initiative regarding the autonomy of Szeklerland, a historical region in central Romania where the majority population is Hungarian. To be sent to the Romanian parliament for debate, the authors of the citizens' legislative initiative must collect 100 000 supporting signatures within six months from the day of publication in the Official Gazette. According to the proposal, Romanian and Hungarian would be co-official languages of the autonomous region Szeklerland. The state would grant primary powers over a range of policy areas to the autonomous region, which would establish its own managing institutions. Read more... ​​ 

EURAC researcher Alexandra Tomaselli​ discusses the indigenous right to autonomy on the blog of the Multidisciplinary Network on Indigenous Peoples. Since the late 1980s and throughout the decade of the 1990s, forms of indigenous autonomy or self-government were introduced in the Constitutions of five Latin American countries (Nicaragua, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela), two of which (Ecuador and Bolivia) have reinforced such arrangements in their recent constitutional reforms (at least, on paper). In Mexico, the 2001 constitutional reform also recognised the indigenous right to autonomy, albeit to be implemented at the state (and not federal) level. Read more…​​

​The people living in Venice and surrounding region are demanding for special autonomous status, with lawmakers of the Italian regional council of Veneto approving a law that defined the people from the region as "national minority", in similar terms as the people of neighbouring South Tyrol. The law would allow for the introduction of bilingual teaching and the knowledge of Venetian language and culture for those who want to work in public administration roles, but opponents of the law think Italy's Constitutional Court will declare it invalid. Read more...​

EURAC researchers discuss the ongoing reform of the Autonomy Statute of Trentino-South Tyrol on academic blogs. On the National Observatory on Language Rights (University of Montréal), Jens Woelk gives an overview of the reform process in the two autonomous provinces (Trento and South Tyrol) which form the region Trentino-South Tyrol. The two provinces have chosen their own – and different – participatory procedures, which will have to be coordinated at regional level. On the European Politics and Policy blog (London School of Economics and Political Science - LSE), Stephen Larinand Marc Röggla focus on South Tyrol and argue that although the ability of citizens to participate in the reform has been more limited than originally envisaged, the process is nevertheless evidence of the potential for power-sharing models to transform conflicts. In their follow-up post on the LSE Democratic Audit blog, Larin and  Röggla propose to bolster South Tyrol's liberal–democratic legitimacy by amending the Autonomy Statue to include 'Others' – the province's official designation for people who do not want to declare membership of one of its three official language groups – in the executive proportionality rule.

The Global Forum is Southeast Asia’s most comprehensive conference on autonomy, federalism, and governance as a means to address societal divides and conflicts and promote sustainable development. It brings together governmental officials, scholars, representatives of NGOs, business community and media. The list of case studies presented and discussed include inter alia Mindanao and Cordillera (Philippines), Canada, Spain, India, Australia, Northern Ireland and Scotland (UK), Bougainville (Papua New Guinea), Aceh (Indonesia), Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, South Africa, Finland and Kenya. Read more…​​

The 7th Tibet Support Groups Conference called on the Chinese government to unconditionally resume dialogue with the representative of the Dalai Lama and to respond positively to his efforts to pursue a mutually-beneficial solution through the Middle-Way approach, which calls for genuine autonomy for the whole of the Tibetan people. The conference was organized in Brussels by Tibet Interest Group in the European Parliament, and co-hosted by the International Campaign for Tibet, Lights on Tibet, Les Amis du Tibet, and the Tibetan Community in Belgium. Read more…​​