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Preserving national minorities in Europe

Recommendation 2198 (2021)

Author(s):
Parliamentary Assembly
Origin
Assembly debate on 19 April 2021 (9th sitting) (see Doc. 15231, report of the Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination, rapporteur: Ms Elvira Kovács). Text adopted by the Assembly on 19 April 2021 (9th sitting).
1. The Parliamentary Assembly refers to its Resolution 2368 (2021) “Preserving national minorities in Europe”, in which it calls on Council of Europe member States to strengthen their commitment to the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (ETS No. 157, “the Framework Convention”) and to implementing its standards, which form an integral part of the international protection of human rights.
2. The Assembly recalls that dialogue between the representatives of national minorities and the authorities, as well as between the authorities and the monitoring mechanism set up under the Framework Convention, is a crucial means of achieving the aims of this convention, and emphasises the importance of continuous multilateral engagement in this field.
3. The Assembly therefore calls on the Committee of Ministers to:
3.1 encourage States parties to invest renewed efforts in implementing fully the recommendations of Council of Europe monitoring bodies as a way of preserving linguistic, ethnic and cultural diversity and building societies in which minorities are not merely tolerated, but respected and perceived as an equal and integral part;
3.2 step up its efforts to ensure the rapid adoption of the resolutions that conclude the monitoring cycle with respect to each State party, in accordance with the procedure set out in Resolution CM/Res(2019)49 on the revised monitoring arrangements under Articles 24 to 26 of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, adopted by the Committee of Ministers on 11 December 2019;
3.3 examine ways to ensure regular and formal co-operation between the Advisory Committee of the Framework Convention and the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) when assessing the compliance with Council of Europe norms and standards of domestic legislation related to the protection of national minorities in member States;
3.4 consider establishing more multi-faceted co-operation with civil society through the creation of a public online platform that would enable more data to be collected and would allow serious concerns about the rights of persons belonging to national minorities to be detected at an earlier stage, along similar lines to the Platform to promote the protection of journalism and safety of journalists already put in place by the Council of Europe.