 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (May 2007) |
| CET 148 | |
|---|---|
 Member states that have signed and ratified in dark green, those that have signed but not ratified in light green, those that have neither signed nor ratified in white, non-member states of the Council of Europe in grey. Source: the list of signatories at the Council of Europe website. | |
| Signed | 5 November 1992 |
| Location | Strasbourg |
| Effective | 1 March 1998 |
| Condition | Ratification by 5 States |
| Signatories | 34 |
| Parties | 25 |
| Depositary | Secretary General of the Council of Europe |
| Languages | English and French |
| Full text | |
 European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages at Wikisource | |
The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) is a European treaty (CETS 148) adopted in 1992 under the auspices of the Council of Europe to protect and promote historical regional and minority languages in Europe. However, the charter does not provide any criterion or definition for an idiom to be a minority or a regional language, and the classification stays in the hands of the national state.[1]
The preparation for the charter was undertaken by the predecessor to the current Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, the Standing Conference of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe because involvement of local and regional government was essential. The actual charter was written in the Parliamentary Assembly based on the Congress' Recommendations. It only applies to languages traditionally used by the nationals of the State Parties (thus excluding languages used by recent immigrants from other states, see immigrant languages), which significantly differ from the majority or official language (thus excluding what the state party wishes to consider as mere local dialects of the official or majority language)[2] and that either have a territorial basis (and are therefore traditionally spoken by populations of regions or areas within the State) or are used by linguistic minorities within the State as a whole (thereby including such languages as Yiddish, Romani and Lemko, which are used over a wide geographic area).
Some states, such as Ukraine and Sweden, have tied the status of minority language to the recognized national minorities, which are defined by ethnic, cultural and/or religious criteria, thereby circumventing the Charter's notion of linguistic minority.[3]
Languages that are official within regions, provinces or federal units within a State (for example Catalan in Spain) are not classified as official languages of the State and may therefore benefit from the Charter. On the other hand, Ireland has been unable to sign the Charter on behalf of the Irish language (although a minority language) as it is defined as the first official language of the state. The United Kingdom has ratified the Charter in respect to (among other languages) Welsh in Wales, Scots and Gaelic in Scotland, and Irish in Northern Ireland. France, although a signatory, has been constitutionally blocked from ratifying the Charter in respect to the languages of France.
The charter provides many actions state parties can take to protect and promote historical regional and minority languages. There are two levels of protection—all signatories must apply the lower level of protection to qualifying languages. Signatories may further declare that a qualifying language or languages will benefit from the higher level of protection, which lists a range of actions from which states must agree to undertake at least 35.
- ^ Gabrielle Bernoville, Europe's forgotten words. The case of the European Regional and minority languages Archived 2021-06-15 at the Wayback Machine, La Regionisto,
- ^ Kordić, Snježana (2024). "Ideology Against Language: The Current Situation in South Slavic Countries" (PDF). In Nomachi, Motoki; Kamusella, Tomasz (eds.). Languages and Nationalism Instead of Empires. Routledge Histories of Central and Eastern Europe. London: Routledge. pp. 167–179. doi:10.4324/9781003034025-11. ISBN 978-0-367-47191-0. OCLC 1390118985. S2CID 259576119. SSRN 4680766. (COBISS.RS 125229577). COBISS 171014403. Archived from the original on 2024-01-10. Retrieved 2024-01-16. p. 173, 169:
In Croatia and Serbia, segregation takes place in the name of minority language rights, ignoring that the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages gives a clear definition of a minority language that excludes the term 'minority language' in this case. [...] although the Charter reads that a minority language must be different from the official language and must not be a dialect of the official language, and although the standard language of Bosniaks, Croats, Montenegrins and Serbs is based on the same dialect called Shtokavian, and it is clear that according to the Charter it cannot be regarded as several minority languages.
- ^ Hult, F.M. (2004). Planning for multilingualism and minority language rights in Sweden. Language Policy, 3(2), 181-201.