Language Rights as Cultural Rights: A European Perspective

The chapter starts with an exploration of the national constitutional law of European countries, in recognition of the fact that linguistic rights are still primarily defined and regulated within the national context. This exploration is structured on the basis of a typology of distinct constitutional models (section II). After that, the chapter turns to the analysis of the common standards that have been developed at a transnational European level, in the context of the Council of Europe (section III) and also in the context of the European Union (section IV). Although these common European standards have limited the previously complete discretion that states had in regulating language use, their relevance is limited and uneven. There is, arguably, not yet a “comprehensive and coherent package” of European (or international) linguistic rights, but it may be in the making.