The chapter explains how and why the EU has intervened with both standards and procedural regulations in the case of organic agriculture, first in 1991 and again in 2007. The chapter begins with analyzing the development of private organic agriculture governance since the late-1960s. It shows how attempts at private governance harmonization, the expectation of EU intervention providing new productive opportunities for farmers, and active lobbying by the organic agriculture movement (especially IFOAM) resulted in the 1991 EU Organic Agriculture Regulation. The Regulation offered an organic production standard and modest procedural rules for private governance schemes. Continued problems due to a fragmented private governance market led the Commission to propose severe limitations on private schemes’ governance space in the early-2000s. Opposition to these proposals by private governance schemes, the organic movement, and key Member States prevented significant public intervention. Nonetheless, both standards and procedural regulations were strengthened in an updated Regulation in 2007 by the introduction of a mandatory EU organic logo and mandatory accreditation of private auditors.

One theme common to both Roma rights and civil rights is the role played by anti-integrationists and ethnonationalists, who argue that the nation and one particular ethnicity or race should be synonymous. These contingents within the majority populations oppose the two rights movements in order to maintain the status quo. During the Civil Rights movement, this camp insisted on preserving the “Southern way of life,” a racial stasis where “whites exercised power and blacks acquiesced.”

To properly contextualize Roma rights and explore the parallels with civil rights, we must first trace the history of Romani peoples in CSEE, a history that stretches back over a millennium. Scholars have studied the origins of the Roma as well as their paths into CSEE for centuries. For nearly as long, this scholarship has objectified, exoticized, and marginalized its very subjects – in short, replicating society’s exclusion of the Roma. To highlight and avoid these perils, we begin this Chapter by surveying how Romani studies as a field has evolved to a juncture that now facilitates broader structural comparisons with other minority groups.