At the December EU summit in Copenhagen, the 15-nation bloc and the ten candidate countries made an historic step towards enlargement, which is to become reality by May 2004. In a year and a half, the border between Slovenia and Austria will cease to exist - at least from economic point of view. The border, praised by the nationalist movements in the Austrian province of Carinthia, will gradually become nothing but a formality on paper - officially. A "border mindset" however, will represent a major challenge in southern Austria for the next few years. The economic prosperity of this region will, among other things, also depend on good cross-border relations among the people themselves; yet Austria at the moment is not up to this challenge.

The south Austrian provinces of Carinthia and Styria are home to an autochthonous Slovenian ethnic minority, a remnant of former Slavic groups that populated the entire south and east of today's Austria. Although this minority has had its rights guaranteed by two international treaties - the Saint Germain Peace Treaty of 1919 and the Austrian State Treaty of 1955 - plus European conventions, Austria has failed to fully implement them. The Slovenian minority in Styria is not even officially recognized, while ethnic Slovenians in Carinthia have had to fight for every benefit that should have been taken for granted.

Austria has not solved the problem of bilingual signposts in Carinthia or the issue of Slovenian as an official language, even though it has been ordered to do so by a ruling of its Constitutional Court.

The beginning of this year brought another blow to the Slovenian minority. The round-the-clock radio programme called Radio dva, which had been funded by the Austrian national radio and television station ORF, was left without financial resources. The official argument for this step was the difficult financial situation faced by ORF, but in fact the decision has political reasons. Reportedly, the minority radio did not get financial funds because the minority did not accept the government's proposal for bilingual signposts.

Austria's economic and political prosperity in the new European Union will partly depend on good relations with its southern neighbour Slovenia. The quality of these relations will certainly depend on Austria's attitude towards the Slovenian minority - unless Slovenia irreversibly renounced its minorities abroad. Yet in this way, Slovenia would only harm itself.