According to Hungarian organizations, the law does not provide an adequate institutional basis and legal mechanisms for the enforcement and protection of the rights of national minorities.Continue reading
The Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs regrets that Ukraine’s Parliament adopted a “flawed minority law that allows the restriction of rights and ignores the needs of national communities living in the country.”
Romania calls on the Ukrainian side to request a new recommendation from the Venice Commission on the matter and to implement the Council of Europe’s constitutional recommendations.
A statement released Thursday deplores the “excessive haste” that has come at the expense of dialogue with the affected communities.
According to Bucharest, the law does not correct the restrictions on rights in the education and language law criticized by the Venice Commission, and the Romanian side does not guarantee the right to education in the mother tongue in a reassuring manner, and uses unclear language regarding the responsibilities of state authorities and minority organizations that control the enforcement of minority rights.
The Ukrainian minority law is also criticized for its lack of clarity regarding the use of administrative language and the absence of a provision on the use of the native language in court. Another shortcoming of the law, according to Bucharest, is that it does not clarify the issue of multilingual signage or the funding of national minority organizations.
The strong domestic and international criticism drawn especially by the provisions reducing the scope of education in minority languages seems justified,”
according to the Commission’s statement. It objects to the switch to Ukrainian-only secondary education and discrimination against non-EU languages, i.e. Russian.
Kiev’s assurances that it wants to involve the ethnic communities in fine-tuning the law are not much to the liking of those affected. Bucharest, for example, has previously pointed out that a meaningful dialogue with representatives of the Romanian community in Ukraine would have been necessary before the law was passed.
This article was originally published on our sister site, Ungarn Heute.
Featured photo via Facebook/Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Romania.