Included in hard law standards is also relevant case law emanating from the Permanent Court of International Justice, the International Court of Justice, the European Commission and Court of Human Rights as well as the European Court of Justice.
Minority standards increasingly include the so-called “soft law” instruments that international organizations and governments adopt on the basis of moral commitment to protecting minorities. Standards in the ECMI environment therefore also include documents on minority protection and non-discrimination issued by the UNESCO, the European Parliament and the Commission, the European Council of the EU, the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers, Parliamentary Assembly and the Venice Commission, the OSCE’s Assembly as well as opinions issued by the EU’s Committee of the Regions, the Council of Europe’s Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe and the Central European Initiative. Particular strong moral value has been attached to the criteria issued by European Council at Copenhagen in 1993, the so-called Copenhagen Criteria.
Whether minority standards are adopted at the international, national or local level, they are often defined on the basis of political and social compromises. This means that optimal norms are seldom achieved, and legal text may not be as clear and directional as could be desired. Explanatory reports to the legal documents relieve some of this problem, but may not provide all answers thus leaving space for interpretation in the implementation phase. Divergent views of how to interpret provisions as well as differences as to the general interpretation of international documents into domestic law therefore render minority standards vulnerable to varied implementation or no implementation at all. The fundamental aim of the ECMI’s work is therefore to investigate how minority standards are implemented and operationalized.