May 2006

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FUEN ADOPTS A NEW CHARTER FOR AUTOCHTONOUS EUROPEAN NATIONAL MINORITIES (Eurolang)

May 2006 – Members of the Federal Union of European Nationalities (FUEN) adopted a new document relating to the rights of minorities in Europe at their annual assembly hosted this year by the Sorbian community in Bautzen – Budyšin,

The first part of the Charter recalls existing international documents and highlights the "lack of binding international provisions”. The scope of the Charter, as explained in the document itself, is both to emphasize the positive role of the autochthonous, national minorities in Europe and to call for the preservation of natural bilingualism and multilingualism “as a natural richness of Europe”.

The document defines the term ‘national minority’ as people resident in the state, citizens of the state, but in a smaller number than the rest of the citizens, the members of the community being resident in the relevant area for generations and distinguished from the majority population by ethnic, linguistic or cultural characteristics, which they wish to preserve. One principle, stressed by the Charter, is positive discrimination for national minorities. The Charter lists fundamental rights including the “right to adopted forms of self-determination and cultural autonomy”.

One political demand is that there is binding minority protection under international law. The document addresses some specific institutions as well: the European Union has been requested to respect its motto “Unity in diversity”, and not only to refer to Member States and their official languages. Also, the Council of Europe is requested to expand its protection measures to cover collective rights.

Finally, States have been requested to recognise all minorities, to improve protection standards and to ratify both the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National minorities.

It is hoped that the new document will give FUEN members and other minority organisations the basic guidelines on what they have to ask for and what they need to achieve.