th the assent of the parties, and the fact that the assent of the Council was required did not change this; it only limited the rights of the parties.
b) Protection meant that the observance of the provisions in concern was under the continuous supervision of the League of Nations. Accordingly, any Member of the Council of the League of Nations had the right to bring to the attention of the Council any infraction, or any danger of infraction, of any of these obligations, following which the Council could give such direction as it deemed proper and effective.
c) Finally, any difference of opinion as to questions of law or fact arising out of these Articles between the parties or any other Power, a Member of the Council of the League of Nations, was held to be a dispute of an international character. Any such dispute, if the other party demanded, was to be referred to the Permanent Court of International Justice, the decision of which was final. Accordingly, the minorities treaties and declarations on the protection of minorities established two kinds of procedures: one before the Council of the League of Nations and one before the Permanent Court of International Justice. In both cases only the members of the Council were entitled to initiate such proceedings: they disposed of the procedure and, according to Article 11 of the Covenant, the given procedure had the legal nature of a matter that was "declared a matter of concern to the whole League".
However, these few provisions were far from enough for the comprehensive regulation of the procedure of the Council. That would be elaborated by the organisation itself in only a few years, by 1925 approximately. Before the introduction of the petition procedure, it is important to indicate certain points that were kept in mind throughout the elaboration of the petition procedure.
Minorities did not have legal personality internationally. Their rights were obligations of international concern to be fulfilled by certain states. Minorities were not the subjects of these obligations but only their beneficiaries (or even objects).
The second point follows from this: minorities did not have the title to bring action against anybody, since, in the case they had grievances, they could not elicit the protection of the Council just because of their existence. Their petition had only an informative character; a member of the Council could then draw attention to the fact that protection procedure should be necessary. Accordingly, only members of the Council could act as parties during the procedure and not in the name of the minorities but only in their interest.
The third point is that not purely law but also political considerations led the bodies of the League of Nations in their dealings with the complaints of the minorities. 
The procedural law of minority protection under the aegis of the League of Nations had been consolidated by the end of 1925. The "procédure écrite",  that is, the procedure in force at the end of 1925 based on resolutions can be summarised as follows:
A petition concerning minorities is submitted to the Secretariat General of the League of Nations. On the basis of the five points of Article 1 of the Council Resolution of 5 September 1923, the Secretariat decides whether the petition is acceptable or not. In case it is, this is brought to the attention of the government concerned (against whom the complaint is lodged). Should this government object to the acceptability of the petition for any reason, the secretary-general would present the question of acceptability to the President of the Council, who could ask the help of two other Council members during the examination of the problem (they formed the tripartite committee). This procedural question could be put on the agenda of the Council at the request of the state concerned.
If the petition was deemed acceptable, the state concerned had three weeks after the communication of this to inform the secretary-general whether it wanted to comment on the petition or not. In the case it did, then it had a period of two