Portugal has a long tradition of contact with other cultures and peoples. Due to the 16th century maritime discoveries and the experience of Portuguese emigration to Brazil and Latin America in general, as well as to other countries in Europe, such as France and Germany, in the 1960s, the...

Lithuania regained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1990. The current constitution1 was approved by referendum in 1992. On 1 May 2004 Lithuania joined the EU, meaning that significant changes to the legal system had taken place in little over a decade to meet EU and international...

Austria is a wealthy modern welfare state with a population of about 8 million people. The majority of the population is white and German speaking. Autochthonous and recognised minorities are the Croats, Slovenes, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks and Roma. Starting in the late 1960s Austria became a...

Norway is based on a civil law system, where the Constitution is top of the hierarchy and national laws and regulations define the system in more detail. The interpretation of laws is based on both preparatory works as well as interpretations by the courts. The court system is based on three...

The Czech legal system belongs to the Germanic branch of continental legal culture. Written law is the basis of the legal order, and the most important sources of law are legal regulations (acts of Parliament, as well as government or ministerial orders), international treaties (once they have...

There have been great social and political changes in Spain in the last 40 years. Major transformations have taken place in the country's social structure, forming a much more diverse society in ethnic and religious (and other) terms. One of the greatest changes has been Spain's transformation...

Sweden was until recently a fairly homogenous country. It is also a strongly secular country, albeit within a Lutheran Church tradition. Its population is only around 9.6 million. However, the proportion of foreign-born inhabitants increased from 6.7 % in 1970 to 19.1 % in 2010 and continues to...

The Slovak Republic is a country of 5.4 million people. In addition to Slovak nationals, a wide range of minority groups live in the country. The largest groups are Hungarians (8.5 %) and the Roma minority. The official number of Roma in the last census (2011) was 105 738 (2 %), although the...

The key to the French legal approach to racism and discrimination is based on the abstract universalistic formal concept of equality, enshrined in a range of instruments, including the Constitutions of 1946 and 1958. The resulting legal framework has developed along two complementary lines: the...

Until the end of the 1980s, Finland was one of the most culturally homogeneous countries in Europe. The number of immigrants was minimal. In the 1990s a major shift from emigration into immigration took place, and the number of foreign citizens grew from 26 300 in 1990 to 168 000 in 2010....