Developments in the Field of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages

Abstract

All “original” parties that ratified the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages before 1998 are now in the third monitoring round, and many others are going through the second round, which means that a noteworthy dialogue has been established between all interested sides and that these states parties have had sufficient time to respond to most of the recommendations. In the period covered by this article, the third reports for the following countries were accepted by the committee of ministers and accordingly became public: Finland, Switzerland, Croatia, the Netherlands and Germany. In the same period, the committee of ministers adopted the first report on Luxemburg, the second report on Spain (they became public in December 2008) and the fourth report on Lichtenstein. Several other reports were adopted by the committee of experts but have not yet become public pending the adoption by the committee of ministers. As far as Luxemburg and Lichtenstein are concerned, these countries have no regional or minority languages spoken in their territory, so the committee of experts has not carry out its usual evaluation. Nevertheless, even in these cases the committee requires that the charter and the initial state report be made public.