1 European Integration and the Geopolitics of National Minorities 1 David J Galbreath and Joanne McEvoy Abstract The issue of national minorities in post-Cold War Europe has warranted considerable scholarly attention with regard to security, democratization and regional integration. The literature has focused on how European integration compelled host states to comply with obligations to protect a national minority within their borders. Missing from this debate, however, is a more comprehensive analysis of whether European integration has had an effect on the wider geopolitical relationship between the host state and kin state over national minorities. Has European integration served to dampen or intensify the salience of nationalist politics between host and kin states? To address this gap we explore the range of host state – kin state relations in Central and Eastern Europe corresponding to whether both states are EU members (at least one may be a candidate country) compared to when one state remains external to the EU for the foreseeable future. We argue that, despite much of the Europeanisation literature, European integration can have an amplifying effect on nationalism regardless of whether kin-states are existing members, acceding states or outside the process altogether. Key words: European integration, national minorities, kin states Introduction Since the end of the Cold War and the reassertion of national sovereignty by the formerly communist states in Central and Eastern Europe, the status of national minorities has once again had a significant impact on relations between host-states and kin-states. Despite extensive research on how inter-state relations were transformed from the early 1990s onwards, the literature arguably lacks a full understanding of the evolving geopolitical dimensions at play. In this article we investigate host state – kin state relations over national minorities as our dependent variable. We seek to determine whether the process of European integration has dissipated or intensified the salience of nationalist politics in inter-state relations. Thus, our focus corresponds to a scholarly concern with Europeanisation as ‘the impact of European integration on member state policies, practices and politics’ (Schmidt and Radaelli 2004: 183). Ultimately, we argue that European integration can act as both a suppressant and amplifier of host state – kin state relations over national minorities. The study points to the potential impact of the EU in shaping often- contentious inter-state relations. Beyond shedding new light on recent enlargements, the research has significance for future integration in the Western Balkans given the complexity of ethnic group, host state and kin state dynamics. The often tense relations among a national minority, its host state and its kin state have been a topic of concern for scholars of nationalism and ethno-politics. Rogers Brubaker (1996) made an important contribution to our understanding of 1 The authors would like to thank the Leverhulme Trust for their financial support of the project ‘The European Minority Rights Regime: Power, Interests, and Knowledge’ as well as the Editors and two anonymous referees for their comments on this paper. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Association for the Study of Nationalities conference held 23-25 April 2009