Isop v. Austria
The first decision dealing with minoritylanguage rightsbased on the ECHR was delivered by the European Commission of Human Rightsin 1962. Mr Isop, an Austrian citizen of Slovene origin filed a complaint with the District Court of Rosegg (Carinthia) against Mr Hafner who allegedly referred to him by defamatory terms (“traitor”, “Tito communist”) at a town council meeting. The complaint was rejected for being drafted in Slovene. The applicant claimed a violation of his right to a fair hearing (Article 6 ECHR), and discrimination against him on the grounds of language (Article 14 ECHR). Although both the Imperial Constitution of 1867 and the State Treaty of 1955 explicitly guaranteed Slovene-speaking persons the right to use their mother tongue for public purposes in mixed areas in Carinthia (and Styria and Burgenland), an 1959 act concerning Court proceedings authorized the use of Slovene in specific areas only – Rosegg was not included. The Commission expressed “certain doubts as to the actual legal situation in Austria”, but it did not concern itself with the matter. The only question it sought answer to was whether the applicant “had sufficient linguistic knowledge to permit him to lodge his complaint in the German language”. In this regard, the applicant alleged that “although he understood and spoke German, he did not feel that his knowledge […] was sufficient for a successful pursuit of his claim”. The Commission, considering that Mr Isop had previously given evidence in court in German and that he had had a German-speaking lawyer, was convinced otherwise and rejected the application. Since then, applications regarding requests for the use of a minority language in criminal proceedings were consequently rejected by the Commission and the ECtHR as inadmissible, because the linguistic guarantee of Article 6 “clearly applies only where the accused cannot understand or speak the language used in court” (K. v. France).