The European Charter for regional or minority languages: a magnum opus or an incomplete modus vivendi?

Abstract

This article investigates to what extent the European Union (EU) has the means to protect minority and regional languages in the EU, looking at the ways three different bodies of the EU, the European Parliament (EP), the Council of Europe (CoE) and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) differ in handling language diversity and the principle of language rights. Whereas the CoE pursue the protection of minority languages as a universal human right, the ECRML looks at it from a language planning perspective. This has two significant consequences: (1) the CoE incorporates the minorities into their resolutions, whereas the ECRML ignores the language users and focuses solely on the languages; (2) the former pursues the collective language rights principle, whereas the latter follows the territorial language rights principle. This article examines the impact the narrative built into the language planning policies has on their effectiveness.