In the first cycle opinion on Romania, adopted on 6 April 2001, the Committee mentioned the risk that institutional arrangements aimed at ensuring the participation of persons belonging to national minorities may give a preferential treatment to one organisation of a national minority and sideline to some extent other organisations of the same minority and the persons who prefer to accede to these last organisations. This remark could easily be tied with the consideration made by the HCNM in his note that in any case the tendency of persons belonging to minorities to be members of, or to vote for parties which are not organised on ethnic lines, has to be encouraged even in the presence of ethnic political parties. No political or cultural minority organisation should be given the monopoly of the representation of a minority.