Migrants as minorities: Integration and inclusion in the enlarged European Union

The developing migration and asylum law and policy of the European Union aim to construct a common normative framework to address the admission and residence of diverse categories of third-country nationals in EU territory. The principles of minority protection, however, are absent from EU law, with the exception of some references in the new Constitutional Treaty and the incorporated Charter of Fundamental Rights,, although they have been employed, to a certain degree, in a prescriptive and pragmatic way in the context of the accession of new Member States. However, increased EU attention to the concept of integration in recent Council policy pronouncements and newly adopted legal measures, aimed almost exclusively at lawfully resident third-country nationals, provides a space where migration policy and minority protection principles may engage more directly. This article undertakes a preliminary assessment of the points of convergence and divergence in these two sets of principles, and argues that greater convergence would result in a more coherent EU policy on integration.