tumn of 1933, the case of the Jews in Germany was put on the agenda of the Assembly. The French delegation submitted a draft proposal, the first part of which wished to confirm the 4th Resolution of the Assembly in 1922. It was suggested that the states not bound by minority treaties should nevertheless act in conformity with the principles laid down in the treaties. The second part dealt directly with the problem of the Jews in Germany. The German delegation declared this issue sui generis a problem that should be settled internally; this was a sovereign right of Germany. Accordingly, the German delegation prevented the adoption of the second part of the draft at the full session of the Assembly. It could easily achieve this, since resolutions had to be adopted unanimously. Only three months later, Hitler declared on air the withdrawal of Germany from the League of Nations.
The reply came quite fast. Scarcely one year later, on 13 September 1934, Jozef Beck, representative of Poland, proposed before the Assembly that minority protection should be transformed into a general system. Furthermore, he declared that the Polish government would refuse any co-operation with the international bodies with respect to the minorities treaties in force until the day the comprehensive minority protection system should enter into force. Poland, therefore, arbitrarily exempted itself from the international protection and supervision of its obligations with respect to minority protection. The League of Nations faced a fait accompli.
The rest of the states affected by the minorities treaties distanced themselves from the Polish step. However, in the autumn of 1935, Romania gave notice to the Secretariat that its government would not submit comments to the petitions and it would not want to represent itself in the tripartite committees either (Romania was elected into the Council of the League of Nations shortly before that). The Romanian government declared passive resistance. However, in 1937, it returned to the full recognition of the minority procedure because of the attitude of the Little Entente.
Although active tripartite committees functioned even in 1939, the minority protection framework weakened after 1937, after which no rapporteurs were for the examination of the minorities issues. In the end, the minority protection system withered under the blows it received throughout the 1930s.
 The present study is based on the monograph (2003) by the author published by Gondolat Kiadói Kör - Minority Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Science.
 Romania was the last country to sign its Minorities Treaty on 9 December 1919; the citizenship question of the Jews living in its territory caused its reluctance. This problem will be discussed in the section on the rules of substantive minority law.
 This problem will be further discussed in the section on the development of procedural minority law.
 Especially Yugoslavia (that is, the Serb-Croatian-Slovenian State) and Romania expressed their firm reservations in writing and orally, even in connection to amendments proposed with the best intent, at the session held on 31 May 1919. This triggered the question on the part of the council of the peace conference: "do they not want to sign the treaties at all or, in case they did, would they not want to fulfil their obligations deriving from the treaties?" See quote in: Viefhaus. ibid 194.
 Flachbarth. ibid 66 and cont.
 Balogh: Der Internationale Schutz der Minderheiten. München, 1928, 44-45.
 László Buza applies a division between substantive and procedural minority law, and follows this categorisation throughout his work. I apply this categorisation, a method known in the theory of international law and law in general in part out of respect for him and, in part, because this method renders the fullest possible presentation of the structure and operation of the minority protection system.
 In this context the word "general" means that the territorial effect of the documents in the given category extends to the entire territory of the co