Paris minority treaties
In the final stages of World War 1, the right of peoples to self-determinationtook on great importance, and the Entente powers and their allies included the assertion of this right among their war aims. However, in the preparation of the peace treaties, the decision-makers did not make ethnicity the main criterion for the establishment of new borders, which led to the creation of many new minorities. Their protection was to be regulated by special treaties at international level to ensure the stability of the peace system. The drafting of minority treaties was the task of the Commission on New States and Minorities, which met for the first time on 2 May 1919, and worked with members from the USA, Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan. The Commission based the treaties on the principle of equal rights for citizens, and essentially aimed to guarantee the cultural, educational and linguistic rights of minorities (including Jewish communities). It rejected national (political) autonomy, but certain elements of collective rights were allowed to be included in the treaties. Although minority protection was eventually left out of the statute of the League of Nations, the new or enlarged states (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and Greece), as well as Austria, Bulgaria and Hungary, were obliged to adopt minority treaties in parallel with the peace treaties. The first was the Polish Treaty for the Protection of Minorities, which entered into force on 28 June 1919 with the signing of the German Peace Treaty. It became the model for other similar treaties. However, their conclusion was not without obstacles: the Yugoslav and Romanian peace delegations in particular protested against them, claiming that they violated the sovereignty of their countries and that the great powers applied double standards to them. The representatives of the victorious powers, however, made it clear that the minority treaties were an integral part of the new peace settlement, and their conclusion was inseparable from its recognition and guarantee, so that in the end the treaties were accepted by all. The practice of protecting minorities under the guarantees of the League of Nations developed during the 1920s, the aim being to deal with minority grievances in a spirit of compromise. The Council of the League of Nationsaccepted about half of the complaints submitted between 1921 and 1938 (500 petitions), but the representatives of minorities did not consider the system to be effective, as it was influenced by the political aspirations of individual states.