Language, Education and the European Convention on Human Rights in the Twenty-First Century

In the Belgian Linguistic case the European Court of Human Rights held that legislation regarding language in education which was based on the principle of territoriality did not offend against the rights guaranteed in Article 2 of Protocol 1 or Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, whether taken alone or in conjunction with Article 14 on non-discrimination. That ruling was given some 35 years ago, and this paper considers whether developments since then might lead the European Court of Human Rights to decide similar issues differently if they arose today. However, having considered the situation, including instruments which have been adopted specifically to deal with language rights and minority rights, the conclusion is reached that the European Court of Human Rights would be likely to continue to allow a fairly wide margin of appreciation to states in the highly sensitive and controversial area of language rights and how they should be protected.