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Our presentation investigates how Voivodina organizes the institutional means for cultures to live together. Our subject matter is the innovative Serbian method of personal autonomy: the system of national minority councils, ensuring the self-organization of cultural communities. We discuss how are NMCs useful for community members to retain their identity and how are they able to present a given collective identity. NMCs are exemplary even for the entire EU, though they also generate new conflicts between (and within) neighbouring cultural groups. We emphasise this because the European civil initiative of minority protection by FUEN (Federative Union of European Nationalities) was rejected by the European Commission. Making use of this relatively recent EU-institution, the initiators wished to oblige the European Council to regulate the issue with the document Minority Safepack Initiative (MSI). The MSI has six areas to regulate: language, educational/cultural, regional politics, presence of minorities in the EP, anti-discrimination, media regulation/support politics. The EU does have its language policy and (a not too efficient) regional policy. But there is not explicit policy to address community or personal identities. Serbia, only an applicant yet, is attempting to form specific institution (based on its own cultural variety and past), and could also serve as an example for European member countries as well, including those who will judge Serbia's democratic maturity by the so-called Copenhagen criteria.

Within its territory, which had been extended by the peace treaties following WW1, Romania intended to create a nation-state that is also religiously uniform. Therefore, minorities in Transylvania meant a twofold problem, as they were both Hungarians and Roman Catholics. Just as Romanians had the denominational schools as fountainheads of national/ethnic awakening during Hungarian authority, now these schools served the safekeeping of the Hungarian national sentiment. This is why governments strived to suppress them as much as possible, even if they were obliged by international treaties to protect them. With regard to governmental actions and public attitude, four periods can be distinguished. In our paper, we aim at monitoring and evaluating the process in an analytic manner.

It was only recently, in the early 2000's, that the national councils were formed as institutions of policy making. The present paper concerns the second election of the national councils, which was held in the traditional way and not by means of electors. In 2010, the primary issue was whether and to what extent the institution is considered legitimate by majority of the Hungarians in Serbia. However, mitigating the collective social inequities of Hungarians in Serbia/Voivodina was not empha-sized. This inequity is partly due to the political deep structure of the representational form of rule. In other words, the dispute on the working of the MNT paralleled the current challenges of the Hungarian party-political system in Voivodina. The actual possibilities of minority policy making or the sensibly discussable circumstances of a given policy area were not really included. The discourse belonged to the dimension of politics rather than that of policies. Even the most skilled intellectuals were unaware of the ways how interests can be institutionalized through policy making. The debate addressed the elections of the MNT and not its procedures of functioning/competence/decision. The 2010 election facilitated the progress in the legality and legitimacy of the body but it also pointed out that, due to the short-term and tactical workings of daily political struggles, the political possibilities and articulations of minority interests will continue to be kept in the background.