Minority Treaties - Bilateral Treaties

Bilateral Treaties

There were several bilateral Minority Treaties, each signed between one of the countries in question and the League. The treaties were signed between the League and some of the newly established nations: Poland, Yugoslavia (also known then as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes), Czechoslovakia. Similar treaties were also imposed on Greece and Entente-allied Romania in exchange for their territorial enlargement, and on some of the nations defeated in the First World War (Hungary, Austria, Bulgaria, Turkey). At the same time, Albania, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and, outside of Europe, Iraq were persuaded to accept minority obligations as part of the terms of their admission to the League of Nations.

The Polish treaty (signed in June 1919, as the first of the Minority Treaties, and serving as the template for the subsequent ones) is often referred to as either the Little Treaty of Versailles or the Polish Minority Treaty; the Austrian, Czechoslovak and Yugoslavian treaties are referred to as Treaty of St Germain-en-Laye (1919); the Romanian treaty as the Treaty of Paris (1919), the Greek as the Treaty of Sèvres (1920); the Hungarian as the Treaty of Trianon (1920), the Bulgarian as the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine (1919), and the Turkish as the Treaty of Lausanne (1923). In most of the above cases the minority treaties were only one of many articles of the aforementioned treaties.