Militants for the Regional and Minority Languages of France (RL & ML) have campaigned for decades to improve their position. They seemed in recent years to have achieved some success, particularly in the domain of education. It was therefore expected that France would eventually sign and ratify the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. And, indeed, the Charter was signed in May 1999, but in June 1999 the Conseil Constitutionnel dashed all these hopes by declaring the Charter incompatible with the French Constitution. This does not mean, however, going back to square one, since many changes, both conceptual and institutional have taken place. The conceptual changes are due to the fact that in the run-up to signing the Charter, the State had to work out which exactly were the RL & ML to be protected within the framework of the Charter. This led to some surprising results. This, in turn, had important positive repercussions from an institutional point of view, despite the negative approach adopted by the Conseil Constitutionnel. Efforts in the domain of education have, however, recently led to confrontation with the Conseil d'État, which means that at present the teaching of RL & ML is in a legal limbo. The fact remains, however, that both conceptual and institutional changes have taken place during the last 5 years.