ABSTRACT
The downfall of Communism in Europe since 1989 has released nationalist forces aiming at reshaping states or creating new ones, sometimes by war, in most barbaric ways. The omission, in the European Convention of Human Rights of 1950, of any provision on minorities corresponds to the same omission in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. Most of the European states had carried on their policy of sometimes soft, sometimes hard, assimilation. The historical outcome is that human rights, liberal democracy, and the rule of law are the obligatory references in Europe for building a regional order. The Council of Europe has no real powers to fulfil its vast mission; it is an organization of co-operation. In the Council of Europe, despite the pressures of the Assembly, the proposals for an additional protocol or a separate convention fell through.
