Papers by Eduardo J. Ruiz Vieytez
Revista Espanola De Derecho Constitucional, 2012
Minority Self-Government in Europe and the Middle East, 2019
In constitutional terms, Spain is not defined as a federal State but as a unitarian state with a ... more In constitutional terms, Spain is not defined as a federal State but as a unitarian state with a significant scope for political decentralisation. Thus, Spain is an example of a complex State. The reasons for implementing autonomies correspond to both internal national-cultural reasons and the search for greater administrative efficiency. However, the existence of one or several nations within the Spanish Kingdom is severely disputed. A majority of citizens living in certain minority communities, particularly Catalonia and the Basque Country, consider Spain as a multinational country. Nevertheless, in the rest of Spain a vast majority of citizens deny this definition and consider Spain as a unique nation. The dispute about sovereignty is a permanent source of friction. This paper pretends to analyse the role played by territorial autonomy as a mean to accommodate minority nations in the Spanish experience after the adoption of the last Constitution in 1978. The point is that Spain constitutes an asymmetric reality in terms of national feelings. The constitutional framework shows some limitations in recognising this reality, and the political agenda is shaped by this permanent tension between symmetry and asymmetry. The last events in Catalonia have underlined the disputes between unionism and separatism, provoking significant challenges to the Spanish constitutional system that should be addressed through an asymmetric configuration of territorial self-government.
La Secretaría General para la Paz y la Convivencia del Gobierno Vasco encargó en la primavera de ... more La Secretaría General para la Paz y la Convivencia del Gobierno Vasco encargó en la primavera de 2015 al Instituto de Derechos Humanos Pedro Arrupe de la Universidad de Deusto la elaboración de un informe que reflejase y analizase la injusticia padecida por las personas que sufrieron la amenaza de ETA y que se materializó, de manera particular, en la necesidad de llevar escolta para protegerse de esta coacción. El estudio tiene un alcance general e indaga cual fue la realidad sufrida por el conjunto de personas que vieron su libertad, su vida y sus derechos coartados por la intimidación terrorista
Revista Vasca de Administración Pública / Herri-Arduralaritzarako Euskal Aldizkaria, 2017
LABURPENA: Azken urteotan, erreferenduma gehiago erabiltzea proposatu dute hainbat sektore sozial... more LABURPENA: Azken urteotan, erreferenduma gehiago erabiltzea proposatu dute hainbat sektore sozial eta politikok, herritarrek parte hartzeko mekanismoa izan dadin eta gure sistemaren birsorkuntza demokratikoa ekar dezan. Europako testuinguruan, Suitzak erabiltzen du gehien erreferenduma. Suitzako esperientziak erakusten duenez, erreferenduma sarri erabiltzea ez dago arazo politiko eta juridikoetatik salbuetsita. Lehenengoen artean, hautesleen parte-hartzea txikia izaten dela, populismoa areagotu egiten dela eta, giza eskubideei eragin diezaieketen arren, herritarren erabakiak goresten dituen kultura politikoa eratzen dela aipa daiteke. Erreferendumean onartutako xedapenek nazioarteko arauei aurka egiten dietenean, zailtasun handiak agertzen dira arlo juridikoan; zehazki, giza eskubideen eremuan. Gure sistema politikoan erreferendumaren erabilera areagotzeko orduan, faktore horiek aintzat hartu behar dira. RESUMEN: En los últimos años varios sectores sociales y políticos han propuesto...
Este capítulo trata de dar cuenta del estado de la cuestión de la libertad e igualdad religiosa e... more Este capítulo trata de dar cuenta del estado de la cuestión de la libertad e igualdad religiosa en España, dentro de un proyecto más amplio dirigido a ofrecer un informe diagnóstico de la situación de los derechos humanos en España.
Contested Spaces, Common Ground, 2017
The physical spaces fitted out by human beings in the form of buildings, plots of land, towers, a... more The physical spaces fitted out by human beings in the form of buildings, plots of land, towers, and meeting centres perform functions that go beyond those they were first created for. In particular, they perform first-level symbolic and identity func-tions. When their primary functions are related to strong identi¬ty features, as in the case of religion, this symbolism is em¬phasised and they become part of the political debate. The Basque Country dealt very timidly with religious di-versity in the past ten centuries, referring to itself as a homo-geneous community with respect to belief. In the last few decades, however, there has been an increase in and greater visibility of the minority religious communities. This has led to the need to meet their basic demands for institutional and social acknowledgement, which have often meant that these com¬munities aspire to have new and better centres or places of wor¬ship. Certain conflicts related to the possible opening of these places and the attempts to regulate them demonstrate that the Basque Country is at last following the usual pattern of Euro¬pean societies that are reluctant to engage in a pacific trans¬formation towards fundamentally diverse and plural societies, including religion.
European Yearbook of Minority Issues Online, 2016
Immigration policies are of great significance for minority nations, like the Basque Country. Bas... more Immigration policies are of great significance for minority nations, like the Basque Country. Basque nationalism is inclusive and civic; through regional institutions, it has created an informal citizenship with a strong social foundation. This regional citizenship, despite some limitations on regional powers, embraces immigrants by offering social rights to all in order to promote integration in a Basque nation in which identities are not clearly defined. From a technical and legal perspective, there is no specific or separate regional citizenship that could be created by regional institutions in the Basque Country. From a political perspective, however, the principle of inclusive citizenship incorporated by regional policies has played a significant role in the integration process. This trend is similar to the situation in Scotland although it differs slightly from the cases of Catalonia and Quebec, nations in which language is a strong marker of identity.
The Age of Human Rights Journal, 2016
Integration policies are intended to have the dual aim of providing immigrants with the means to ... more Integration policies are intended to have the dual aim of providing immigrants with the means to function in the society where they live and develop their potential, while preserving their cultural and ethnic identity, and familiarising the non-immigrant population with the rights of immigrants, their culture, traditions and needs. Integration also appears in documents specifically directed at the protection of traditional national minorities. This paper looks to identify the main cultural traits that define minorities in the institutional language and that are relevant for these integration policies. Language and religion emerge as a widely recognised identity factors in this respect. Other possible cultural identity factors gather around the idea of ethnicity, being more difficult to determine.
Cuadernos Europeos de Deusto, 2013
El concepto de minoría nacional no ha sido tradicionalmente relevante en el ordenamiento jurídico... more El concepto de minoría nacional no ha sido tradicionalmente relevante en el ordenamiento jurídico español. Sin embargo, España ratificó en 1995 el Convenio Marco del Consejo de Europa para la Protección de las Minorías Nacionales, lo que exige determinar su ámbito de aplicación en nuestro país. La utilización de dicho Convenio entre nosotros ha sido hasta la fecha muy limitada y cabe plantearse una aplicación más extensa y abierta a partir de la práctica de los otros Estados europeos y de las opiniones de los organismos europeos de control. En este sentido, el Convenio Marco puede ser aplicado en España a otros colectivos culturales, lingüísticos o religiosos que en la actualidad no gozan de su protección. El análisis de las opiniones desarrolladas en el ámbito europeo en los últimos años a este respecto aconseja esta apertura, a fin de que el Convenio Marco pueda desarrollar su función de constituir un instrumento protector de derechos humanos y favorecedor de una cohesión social m...
The Basque Country can be said to have entered a new post-violence political scenario in 2012. In... more The Basque Country can be said to have entered a new post-violence political scenario in 2012. In this context, a new opportunity for debating about the political status of the Country re-emerges. Electoral behavior and additional social evidence show that the accommodation of the Basque Country within the current Spanish constitutional system is far from being settled. While Catalonia claims for recognition as an independent nation, the debate about the future political relationship between the Basque Country and Spain will be a central feature during the mandate of the Basque prime minister, newly elected in 2012. However, given the different positions of the main political families of this fragmented society, the possibility for a broad agreement that could also be driven through the current constitutional system seems very remote, and major future developments in this field remain uncertain and unlikely. Such a process would face two significant obstacles. On the one hand, there...
Cultural diversity plays today a prominent role in the updating and developing of human rights. P... more Cultural diversity plays today a prominent role in the updating and developing of human rights. Past developments in the protection of rights have essentially forgotten the democratic management of cultural and identity-based diversity. States have stifled the main developments of the rights and constrained them to partial views in favour of the majority or dominant groups in each country. The current context of regional progressive integration and social diversification within each state agrees on the need to address the adequacy of systems for the protection of rights from different strategies to the context of multiculturalism. Against the process of "nationalization of rights" it is necessary to adopt a strategy for pluralization. On the one hand, the concept of minority has to be given its corresponding importance in both international and domestic law. On the other hand, different kind of policies and legal instruments for the accommodation of diversity can be identi...
Diversity and European Human Rights
BREMS, E. (ed.), Diversity and European Human Rights, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013... more BREMS, E. (ed.), Diversity and European Human Rights, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013, pp. 401-425.
Migration Research Group (GRM)
... policies have also been studied via press and parliamentary debates analysis. ... Non-Governm... more ... policies have also been studied via press and parliamentary debates analysis. ... Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) as Policy Actors: The Case of Immigration Policies in Spain ... in IV Congreso sobre Inmigración en España, Girona (organised by the Catalan public universities ...
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Papers by Eduardo J. Ruiz Vieytez
The volume is based on the analysis of the provisions of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and the implementation of the Charter within the states parties through the reports of the Committee of the Experts and other available monitoring documentation. The study aims to describe and assess the content and potential of the provisions of the Charter in order to protect and promote regional or minority languages.
Through a collaborative pan-European project involving 18 researchers from 15 universities and research institutes, this volume proposes a scientific and independent assessment, compatible with a critical perspective about some issues. The main purpose of the study is to establish the current bases of interpretation of this instrument, to support the authority of the Committee of the Experts in its responsible task of interpreting the Charter and to assess how states parties fulfil their undertakings under this instrument.
The book is addressed to the governments of the states (and the regions and other sub-national entities) that have signed or ratified the Charter, as well as to the states that are now preparing their signature or ratification. Such a work may also have interest for the Council of Europe's various bodies and be useful to civil servants and other public agents charged to apply the Charter in different sectors. NGOs that participate in the monitoring process of the Charter and foster its application in their states can also profit from the comparisons of experiences and interpretation of the provisions of the Charter. Scholars and citizens interested in linguistic matters at European level will find in this volume an in-depth study of the scope of language rights in the states that have ratified the Charter.
The methodology of the study is based on consideration of the Charter as a living instrument. On one side, the Charter is a useful instrument with a high degree of complexity subject to interpretation; on the other side, the interpretation of Charter, as a flexible instrument, is dependent on the different situations of the states and the languages to which it applies. The reports of the Committee of Experts are a major source of information for the study and interpretation and implementation of the Charter.
We hope that this work will shed useful light on the scope of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, a cornerstone for European language diversity with an outstanding role in the protection of linguistic rights.