What are the geographical limits of Europe?
The Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights holds the view that the geographical limits of Europe are difficult to determine. Various criteria that have been traditionally applied are still important today but they are no longer sufficient. The criterion of a religious-philosophical community of shared values should not be applied as the only criterion, particularly because it would ignore the development of multicultural societies in Europe. However, in the past few years it has become apparent that human rights can no longer be considered separately from the issue of minorities. The idea that in certain cases a state can only exist when its population is homogeneous ethnically, culturally or with respect to religion — the very idea that confronts Europe today in its most awful manifestation in the former Yugoslavia — is in itself at variance with human rights. The fundamental legal concept of human rights by definition contains the notion of a multicultural, multi-ethnic and mult
