The right to participate as part of the European protection of national minorities.

The right to participate as part of the European protection of national minorities Abstract This thesis provides an insight into the subject of the right of national minorities to effective participation, especially in the light of the European regional level of minority rights regulation. The main goal of the work is to define the specific means and procedures whereby states can ensure the effective participation of persons belonging to national minorities in various areas of public life. The Council of Europe's Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities serves as the focal point of the work, as it so far contains the only legally binding provision at European level guaranteeing minorities the right to effective participation. The thesis itself is divided into four chapters. The initial chapter of the work provides an overview of the right to effective participation in a general sense in the context of international protection of human rights. In the second chapter the author scrutinizes the position of the right to effective participation in documents on minority protection at universal and regional level, as well as in other international conventions that may be relevant in this regard. The following chapters of the work focus predominantly on the above-mentioned Framework Convention...