  We suppose that a L\'evy process is observed at discrete time points. A
rather general construction of minimum-distance estimators is shown to give
consistent estimators of the L\'evy-Khinchine characteristics as the number of
observations tends to infinity, keeping the observation distance fixed. For a
specific $C^2$-criterion this estimator is rate-optimal. The connection with
deconvolution and inverse problems is explained. A key step in the proof is a
uniform control on the deviations of the empirical characteristic function on
the whole real line.
