The influence of the European institutions on minority protection in nation-states and on minority mobilisation has been studied extensively, but studies of the reverse relationships are rate. My paper discusses conceptual and methodological difficulties such approaches have avoided thus far by underemphasising the impact of nation-state and minority mobilisation on European institutional dynamics. The central claim of the paper is that while the scholarship on minority issues systematically treats protection and empowerment as locked in a zero sum game, they are not.
