European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages

The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) is a European treaty that was adopted in 1992.

It was designed by the Council of Europe to protect and promote historical regional and minority languages in Europe. It only applies to languages traditionally used by the nationals of the State Parties which have a lot of differences from the majority or official language. This means that the treaty does not protect languages used by recent immigrants from other countries. Also, the treaty does not protect local dialects of (ways of speaking) the official or majority language)

To be protected a language should be spoken either by

• the people living in a region or area of the country; or by
• a minority in the country as a whole (this means languages such as Yiddish and Romani are covered by the treaty even though there is no "Romani region").

National official languages are not covered by the treaty, but regional official languages can be. For example, Catalan is only official within a region of Spain, so could benefit from the treaty but Irish cannot because it is an official language in Republic of Ireland, even though it is a minority language. However Irish is protected in Northern Ireland because it is not an official or national language of the United Kingdom.

France has signed the treaty, but the French constitution does not allow the government to support languages apart from French.

What the Charter does

There are two levels of protection. Every country which has signed the treaty must give all qualifying languages the lower level of protection. Countries can also decide to give some languages the higher level of protection. The higher level is a list of things countries should do. A country giving higher protection must do at least 35 of these things.

Languages protected under the Charter

The countries which have ratified the Charter and the languages for which the ratification was made are the following:

Armenia ratification: 25 January 2002 Assyrian Yezidi Greek Russian Kurdish Austria ratification: 28 June 2001 Croatian in Burgenland Slovene (in Carinthia and Styria) Hungarian (in Burgenland and Vienna) Czech (in Vienna) Slovak (in Vienna) Romani (in Burgenland) Croatia ratification: 5 November 1997 Italian Serbian Hungarian Czech Slovak Rusyn Ukrainian Cyprus ratification: 26 August 2002 Armenian Czech Republic ratification: 15 November 2006 Slovak (parts II and III, in all of the Republic) Polish (part II; and part III in the Frydek-Místek and Karviná districts of the Moravian-Silesian Region) German (part II only) Romani (part II only) Denmark ratification: 8 September 2000 German (in Southern Jutland) Finland ratification: 9 November 1994 Sami Swedish (co-official language) Germany ratification: 16 September 1998 Danish (in Schleswig-Holstein) Upper Sorbian (in Saxony) Lower Sorbian (in Brandenburg) North Frisian (in Schleswig-Holstein) Saterland Frisian (in Lower Saxony) Romany (across Germany) Low Saxon (in Bremen, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein) Hungary ratification: 26 April 1995 Croatian German Romanian Serbian Slovak Slovene Liechtenstein ratification: 18 November 1997 No regional or minority languages Luxembourg ratification: 22 June 2005 (to be confirmed) Montenegro ratification: 15 February 2006 Albanian Romani Netherlands ratification: 2 May 1996 West Frisian (in Friesland) Limburgish (across the Netherlands) Dutch Low Saxon (across the Netherlands) Romani (across the Netherlands) Yiddish (across the Netherlands)

Norway ratification: 10 November 1993 Kvensk Sami Serbia ratification: 15 February 2006 Albanian Bosnian Bulgarian Hungarian Romani Romanian Rusyn Slovak Ukrainian Croatian Slovakia ratification: 5 September 2001 Bulgarian Croatian Czech German Hungarian Polish Romani Rusyn Ukrainian Slovenia ratification: 4 October 2000 Hungarian Italian Romani Spain ratification: 9 April 2001 Basque (co-official in the Basque Country and part of Navarre) Catalan (co-official in the Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Valencia) Galician (co-official in Galicia) Sweden ratification: 9 February 2000 Finnish Meänkieli Sami Romani Chib Yiddish Switzerland ratification: 23 December 1997 Italian Romansh Ukraine ratification: 19 September 2005 Ukraine does not specify languages by name, but rather ratifies on behalf of the languages of the following ethnic minorities: Bulgarian Byelorussian Crimean Tatar Gagauz Greek German Hungarian Jewish Moldavian Polish Romanian Russian Slovak United Kingdom ratification : 27 March 2001 All languages are ratified as applicable to the territory of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, except Manx, which is ratified on behalf of the Crown dependency of the Isle of Man. Cornish Irish Manx (ratified on behalf of Government of the Isle of Man) Scots in Scotland and Northern Ireland (Ulster Scots) Scottish Gaelic Welsh

Other pages

• European languages
• Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities
• Languages of the European Union
• Language policy in France
• Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights
• Vergonha

Other websites

• European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages page (Legal Affairs, Council of Europe)
• More information