Safeguarding Europe’s linguistic heritage

The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages is a Council of Europe convention designed to protect and promote states parties’ traditional minority languages and enable speakers of these languages to use them in both private and public life. This new edition of the collected texts of the Charter, presents, in addition to the text of the Charter and its explanatory report, the various decisions of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe concerning the arrangements for monitoring the application of the Charter by its states parties. It also includes the Rules of Procedure of the Committee of Experts of the Charter, which assesses the conformity of state policies and practices with the commitments undertaken. This publication outlines the evolution of the fundamental texts and commitments of European states to protect and promote the regional or minority languages spoken in Europe. Government experts and decision makers, representatives of the speakers of the more than 80 languages covered by the Charter and non-governmental organisations, researchers and other stakeholders will also find an update on the functioning of the Charter monitoring mechanism since its reform entered into force in July 2019.