The minority competence network is a network that was established in 2020 and gathers all national and regional minorities of the German-Danish border region. These minorities are: the Danish minority in Germany, the German minority in Denmark, the North Frisian minority and the German Sinti and Roma.
The aim of the network is to encourage actions for autochthonous minorities in the region and abroad.  

The minority competence network would like to invite a group of finlandssvenskar and people from the German-Danish border region interested in the topic of religion and identity to the German-Danish border region in order to discuss how minorities across borders can live peacefully side by side and share experiences. As you can see from our first draft programme, we would like to focus on how churches and their institutions and minorities take part in Denmark and Germany and how we can compare this situation with the Swedish-speaking Finns.    

As the Danish-German border region is often stated as best practice example for minority issues in Europe, it would be interesting for us to discuss whether this actually is the case or not.  For instance, is a good example that the constitution of the federal state Schleswig-Holstein recognises all four minorities. However, in Denmark there is a proposed law to ban all other languages than Danish in churches and mosques. If this law passes the Danish Folketing it means that the German minority in Denmark is forced to translate their preaches into Danish. Thus, the situation can be two-faced and discussed thoroughly.

The project is sponsored by the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein. We can cover accommodation and food plus we can grant a partial travel allowance. The event will take place in English.

I hope that this introduction of the programme is useful to you. Please, contact us if you have any further questions. 
You can find the draft program here.

You can find the General Terms and Conditions of Business and Participation incl. the information sheet for travel and expense reimbursement here.