A/50/514 English Page 18 B. European Commission on Human Rights 64. It should be recalled that the European Convention on Human Rights does not lay down any specific minority rights. Important considerations in respect of the Convention include the following. Its text refers to "national minorities" only in article 14; non-discrimination can only be inferred with respect to any of the other articles of the Convention. Although "language" is one of the grounds on which discrimination is prohibited under article 14, the right to the use of a particular language in contacts with the authorities is not generally guaranteed. Article 25 recognizes the right of petition of "persons", "non-governmental organizations" and "groups of individuals"; with reference to the latter two categories, each member of the group must be affected by the alleged violation of the Convention. The possibility of complaining about the treatment of a minority as such exists in the context of an inter-State application under article 24 (e.g. Cyprus v. Turkey which concerned, inter alia, the treatment of the enclaved Greek Cypriot population in the north of Cyprus). 65. With reference to the case law dealing specifically with minority situations, the following may be mentioned: (a) In a case concerning a linguistic census in Austria, in which the applicant claimed to belong to the Slovene minority although he did not use the Slovene language, the Commission considered that there was no violation of the Convention as the protection of individual members of a linguistic minority is limited to the right not to be discriminated against in the enjoyment of the rights contained in the Convention on the ground of belonging to the minority; (b) In several cases the Commission denied that a right to "linguistic freedom" was enshrined in the Convention. In two cases concerning the use of the Slovene and the Flemish languages respectively in civil court procedures, the Commission considered it relevant that the legal provisions on court language were complied with and that the applicants had bilingual lawyers. Similarly, in a case concerning the refusal of a criminal court in France to hear witnesses in the Breton language, the Commission considered that there were no violations of article 6, paragraph 1, or of article 14, since the Convention did not guarantee the right of witnesses to speak in a language of their choice and the witnesses had not claimed that they were unable to speak French. In three other cases, the Commission considered that a right to "linguistic freedom" could not be derived from article 9 (freedom of thought and conscience) or article 10 (freedom of expression) as the applicants were not prevented from expressing their thoughts freely in the language of their choice. Concerning elections to legislative bodies established according to linguistic criteria, the Commission considered that non-representation of the minority constitutes a breach of article 3 of the First Protocol to the Convention, but the Court did not confirm this view. It held that the compulsion to vote for candidates who belong to either one or the other language group in the national parliamentary institutions and to the corresponding community council was not a disproportionate limitation on the free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature; /...