The Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities

The Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM) represents the first multilateral agreement focused on the protection of national minorities worldwide. It was adopted on 10 November 1994 by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe (CoE), and it is in force since 1 February 1998. As of March 2021, 39 states are Parties to the FCNM. Unsurprisingly, the ECMI has remained especially attentive to the developments of the FCNM, as the bundle below illustrates.  

The FCNM constituted a landmark instrument at the time of its adoption in view of the number of diverging opinions of the CoE Member States during the travaux préparatoires. Martín Estébanez and Gal explained back in 1999 that the FCNM tried to cast into legal terms the political declaration of intent stipulated by the Copenhagen Document of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE, now OSCE) of 1990. The same commentators pointed out that, although the final text was not utterly satisfactory, it was probably the best one could get.   

Moreover, a substantial part of the FCNM is dedicated to government action, in particular Articles 3 to 18. The official monitoring process runs in five-year cycles, and it requires State Parties to submit national reports, which are subsequently evaluated by the CoE Advisory Committee to the FCNM. Along with the State report, the Opinion of the Advisory Committee and the Resolution of the Committee of Ministers are the central phases of the most significant “procedural” feature of the FCNM, in the words of Ljubica Djordjević. This commentator points to many delays in each monitoring process, which “remain a rule and not an exception”. In 2015, Tove H. Malloy together with Katarzyna Zbrowska and Francesco Biagini sought to elaborate a comprehensive set of qualitative indicators for the FCNM, which in essence are governance indicators aimed at identifying specific areas of concern where minority life should or could be protected and how this may be pursued.  

Lastly, and apart from the perspective of States Parties, the ECMI commissioned Stéphanie Marsal to undertake a study, which was published in 2018 under the title 20 Years Dealing With Diversity. This publication assessed the impact of the Convention on persons belonging to national minorities, human rights experts and activists, and government officials who were closely involved with the FCNM. By means of a series of 20 interviews, Marsal offers a selection of experiences and views on the FCNM from across the Council of Europe area.  

 

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