BETWEEN MINORITY PROTECTION AND LINGUISTIC SOVEREIGNTY

Twenty-five years after the Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, it is imperative to thoroughly reassess the status of language groups against the background of, first, the massive changes that have taken place in the framework of European politics since 1992 and, second, the normative deficits of approaches that may well have been designed with good intentions, yet end up reproducing entrenched structures of domination and subalternity. On the side of European politics, one can hardly say that recent developments bear witness to the emergence of a post-national order. In an environment characterized by the growing impact of identity politics played out by and for majorities, the generosity European governments were formerly willing to express towards minority concerns - however rhetorical it may have ultimately been - has nowadays become an exceptional phenomenon. On the normative side, we have seen that the Charter, notwithstanding its relevance for offering a template that facilitates the articulation of minority needs, does not constitute a real counterweight to the limits of a political order effectively controlled by national governments. When it comes to guaranteeing the institutional visibility and safe reproduction of minoritized identities, the impact of minority provisions and autonomy regulations is a limited one. Equal linguistic rights at the individual and the collective level require the active promotion of sovereignty options beyond the conventional majority-minority frame.