Insular Regions and European Integration: Corsica and the Åland Islands Compared
Publisher: ECMI Volume: 73 pages, pdf Description: The work of ECMI had hitherto been focused on minority issues in Central and Eastern Europe and it was felt that it would be important to examine a case in Western Europe where violence was being used to achieve the political demands of a cultural or linguistic minority. The three major cases where this was still happening (or had happened in the recent past) in the West were Northern Ireland, the Basque Country and Corsica. The first two cases were struggling toward peaceful settlements while Corsica was still lurching from one crisis to another with no let-up in the use of violence. Indeed, in February 1998, shortly after ECMI decided to address the Corsican case, a hitherto unknown clandestine group assassinated the Prefect for the Island, Claude Erignac. A solution seemed further away than ever.