17/11/2011 Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Strasbourg, 16.11.2011 - In a report on ‘an additional protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights on national minorities’, presented to the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights in Paris today, rapporteur György Frunda (Romania, EPP/CD) regrets that the main Council of Europe instruments for the protection of the rights of national minorities have not been ratified by all member states and underlines the numerous shortcomings in their implementation, already referred to in previous PACE Resolutions.
“Considering the precarious situation of numerous national minority groups in Europe, it is time to reconsider the Assembly’s previous proposals concerning the adoption of an additional protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights, which could reinforce the standing of national minorities groups before the Strasbourg Court and provide them with substantive and justiciable rights,” the rapporteur stressed.
In a draft recommendation adopted today, the Committee therefore calls on the Committee of Ministers to consider drafting an additional Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights providing for minimum rights for national minorities which could include:
• the right of every person to express freely his/her belonging to a national minority
• political rights
• cultural rights
• the right to make decisions on different forms of autonomy
• the right to freely use a minority language in private and public life.