In the Babel of our planet, there are some 6,600 existing languages, spoken in about 170 existing countries; yet only 67 are given the status of an official language. Although European minorities have been claiming their rights the most, one has to admit that in Europe the ratio between languages recognized as official and those not enjoying this status is still 1:2 (28:60). This doesn"t look bad at all in comparison to, for example, North America where the ratio is 1:100: there are only two official languages (and this only in Canada) and some 200 native and, despite everything, still living ones (the languages of immigrants from different parts of the world are not included herein). In Africa and South America, to mention two more examples, the ratio is even more drastic: 1:200 and 1:400 respectively, which means about 10 official to 2000 spoken languages in Africa or 5 to 2000 in South America.

Despite these ratios, the question of minority groups' protection and rights seems to be mostly discussed in Europe. This probably results from the fact that due to frequent border modifications on this continent, many European linguistic groups live in the position of a minority. According to article 1 of the European Council Convention, as minority languages are defined not only those whose speakers, generally with no official status, live in a state next to a linguistic majority (like the Rhetoromans, Bretons, Basques etc.), but also all those languages whose speakers have their own state in which they constitute the majority but who in another state (residing mostly in traditional linguistic territories) are in a minority position (the case of many Hungarians, some German groups etc.).

The question of linguistic and national minorities' protection has thus far not been accordingly regulated. The peace treaty from 1946-47 leaves this problem to the discretion of each individual country. Consequently, the UN Charter doesn't mention minority rights protection, but rather refers only to the discrimination of individuals based on language as a violation of human rights. The International Charter of Civil and Political Rights only contains the following, general regulation about the protection of minority groups: "In countries where ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities live, the members of these minorities cannot be denied the right to promote their own culture, their religion or to use their language, together with other members of their group". (Article 27, translated from German by A.S.)

The question of minority protection was recently set in motion again by the collapse of multinational European states. The establishment of some new borders has ignited ethnic clashes in the former Soviet Union and, in a much more drastic form, in the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia which, until recently, was quoted as an example of how to solve the question of national minorities in a multi-ethnic community. With the disintegration of Yugoslavia into states with nationalistic tendencies, the question of minorities has been resolved by a very simple method which I would call direct and indirect ethnic cleansing: direct when members of a minority ethnic group are either submitted to forceful emigration from their homeland or destroyed, first psychologically and then also physically, and indirect when, following different steps of psychological destruction, minority people are forced to leave "by their own decision". Both variations of ethnic cleansing have been largely used in the newly formed state of Croatia and in the not-any-more-and-still-not-existent Bosnia and Herzegovina, while Serbia is still limiting itself to the first variation. Certainly, such actions can always be excused by the phenomena of civil war and dictatorship, since neither of these have ever favored minorities or differences of any kind. A systematic elimination of minorities was in process until not so long ago even in one of the member countries of the EC: in Franco's Spain.

Switzerland, on the other hand, is a nice example of how a minority, instead of being considered an undesired element and disturbance, can be regarded as part of a country's national riches and identity. In Switzerland, of a total of 6.5 million inhabitants, only 51.000 are Rhetoromans (which amounts to not even 1%). Despite this numerical fact, Rhetoroman doesn't have the status of a minority language, but is instead recognized as the fourth Swiss national language (together with German, French and Italian). At the federal level, however, it still isn't given the status of an official language. So far, this has been due to the fact that Rhetoroman is divided into five main idioms without one, unified written language. Ten years ago, an artificial written language was created, some kind of a Rhetoroman Esperanto which is so smartly constructed that (provided a minimum of good will) it can be understood by every member of the Rhetoroman community. This so called rumantsch grischun has, despite some unjustified scepticism in certain conservative Rhetoroman circles, succeeded in gradually penetrating into areas so far almost entirely dominated by German which had threatened to push aside Rhetoroman. In order to preserve their fourth national language, the Swiss now even intend to implement a modification into Art. 116 of their constitution regarding language use. If in an impending referendum (foreseen for 1994) the Swiss people decide in favour of this change, the Rhetoromans would in the future not only be allowed to use their language in official contacts with federal authorities, but it would also mean that, with federal support, cantons concern themselves more with the protection of jeopardized languages in their territories. Here one has to mention that of the 26 cantons 22 are monolingual, 3 are bilingual and only the canton Graubänden (in French: Grison) is trilingual (with German, Italian and Rhetoroman). For this reason, the functioning of the so called "territorial principle", upon which the Swiss cantons are based and which originally had been introduced to protect the homogeneity of linguistic territories and linguistic minorities (above all Italians and Rhetoromans), faces a problem in this canton: where and how to draw the lines of the eroded Rhetoroman linguistic territory and how to stop it from being further assimilated by much stronger German? It seems to me that any protective mesure on the part of the canton (with federal help) would have to face this problem. If a language is to function as a whole, instead of only as a "kitchen language", and its speakers are to be equal citizens in a country, not reduced to a folkloristic attraction, it is necessary to assure its more or less homogeneous linguistic territory and its active and effective functioning in all areas of public, not only private life. This means a presence in the media, in school, culture, publishing and in official use. This also means, in case of a consequent application of the territorial principle, the right of a language to control its linguistic territory as well as to prevent its assimilation through the language (in this case German) which, due to different historical and mostly economic reasons, has gradually become the majority in its territory.

In the new version of Art. 116 of the Swiss constitution, another new clause is foreseen according to which the federation and the cantons are to work towards the development of understanding and communication between the different linguistic communities. Switzerland is a country that was created on the basis of political will and economic interest and not on the national background of its inhabitants. None-the-less, it has known problems of a socio-psychologic nature characteristic for multi-ethnic communities. These include a certain aloofness towards the cultural, linguistic and possibly religious differences of another ethnic group. According to Gottfried Kolde, one of the experts who have worked on the revision of Art. 116, one legislation is not enough to dismiss such prejudices nor turn negative attitudes into positive ones. Such a legislation should rather be followed by a "stimulation of individual and institutional contacts beyond linguistic barriers, in all areas of life, as well as by a development in the education of other national languages, be it in school or in other forms. These have long since been known as the goals of Swiss linguistic policy and it is the only way promising a favorable change of attitude towards other languages". In an ideal case, this would mean a deepening of bi -or trilingualism not only of Swiss minorities but on the level of the whole country. This certainly cannot be achieved through any forceful introduction of a third national language requirement in schools (the education of a second national language is mandatory in Swiss schools, and this second language is mostly German or French); much more efficient would be, for instance, student exchanges between cantons in order to familiarize oneself with and develop a tolerant relation toward the other's language and culture, or joint cultural, scientific and artistic projects and the same. In the long run, this is the only way to make possible and ameliorate coexistence in a linguistic and cultural pluralism.

I have outlined this Swiss model of linguistic policy and its relation toward a linguistic minority as a possible model upon which a prospective Europe could be based. A Europe that has set unification as a goal will have to solve, as one of its burning issues, the question of its national minorities. This issue does not only concern countries in Central and Eastern Europe, which sooner or later will become a part of United Europe, but also to a large extent many countries presently members of the EC. Conflicts growing out of an unequal position of these minorities and their requests for autonomy could only be resolved on a permanent basis in a United Europe. The dissolution of borders between European states would only mean the first step toward a different, decentralized constitution of European countries, toward a Europe of regions (a concept discussed more and more lately). In a Europe divided into regions (similar to the Swiss cantonal structure), differences (as well as similarities) not only between European countries but also within them would become much more prominent. This way minorities could also better phrase their interests and protect their rights, amongst other things also the right to protect their linguistic territory without fear of being dominated or assimilated by the majority. Through an organization of Europe based on regions, fears of territorial separation of areas in which minorities live would also disappear, since the dissolution of borders would entail the very need of such separation as well as the idea of a possible territorial joining of another state. This would eventually help to chase away the spectre of history from Europe. Not to mention how much more a United Europe based on the riches of its national, linguistic and cultural pluralism would be able to shaken the political and cultural imperialism of the USA, which, in regard to ethnic differences, has long since applied the principle of the melting pot, as already Theodore Roosevelt defined it in 1919: "We have room but for one language, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns out our people as Americans... not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house".

Certainly, these considerations might seem somewhat utopian from the aspect of the actual state of affairs in Europe. But let's not forget that the very idea of a United Europe must have seemed at least this utopian in the period of its conception and the first steps of its realization in the fifties; especially since it was initiated by two then still quite recent ennemies, France and Germany, both of whom had realized that the interest of living together is above any memory of evils done to each other in the past.

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