The paper deals with linguistic practices of the Italian minority in the Croatian region of Istria where a strong regional movement developed celebrating multiculturalism and ethnic co-existence. This European region has become officially bilingual, but the minority protection implemented by either regional or national and European policies shaped by methodological nationalism concerns only the standard Italian language variety while no other configurations of speaking are recognised. Quantitative data on language attitudes and qualitative data from biographical interviews provide an empirical perspective for questioning the common constructions of minority language rights and the mechanisms involved in securing those rights. As evidenced by the results, the so-called Istro-Venetian variety, widely spoken in everyday practices is not just a low-prestige language but a part of political strategy of regional political mobilization. On the other hand, within the ongoing Europeanization process, the standard Italian is seen as a valuable skill in an expanding knowledge economy by both minority and non-minority speakers. The analysis explores the way different language ideologies frame issues of linguistic diversity by considering both power and conflict potentials of European new multilingualism as reflected on minority/regional languages in Istria. Although, the EU has emphasized the importance of minority rights, understood as the protection of subnational groups from the interference of majority-dominated states, it tends to view these rights mostly in terms of national polities, neglecting alternative cultural identities. This dominant bias in EU policies is reflected both on national and regional levels, rendering the recognition of plural forms of diversity difficult.
