Abstract
From Prof. Rainer Hofmann's impressive academic output on various areas of international and European law, his contribution to the development of the European protection of minorities stands out in particular.
Both as the author of landmark publications and as a respected international expert, he has been instrumental in shaping the relevant doctrine of international law. This paper focuses on the question of how the obligations set forth in the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities are to be interpreted in light of the limited human and financial resources of micro-states.
It appears that in the past practice of the Advisory Committee, some fundamental factors related to the smallness of microstates have not been sufficiently taken into account.