New Languages Requirement Raises Concerns in Ukraine – The Law Needs Safeguards to Protect Minorities’ Language Rights

5 comments
  1. > Article 25, regarding print media outlets, makes exceptions for certain minority languages, English, and official EU languages, but not for Russian. Ukrainian authorities justify this by referring to the country’s European ambitions and “the century of oppression of … Ukrainian in favor of Russian.”

    > There are concerns about whether guarantees for minority languages are sufficient. The Venice Commission, the Council of Europe’s top advisory body on constitutional matters, said that several of the law’s articles, including article 25, “failed to strike a fair balance” between promoting the Ukrainian language and safeguarding minorities’ linguistic rights. It stated that “historical oppression of Ukrainian … may lead to the adoption of positive measures aimed at promoting Ukrainian, but this cannot justify depriving the Russian language and its speakers of the protection granted to other languages…”

    How could a country which wants to join EU in future have such a blatant discriminative law?

    Imagine if Croatia had a law which banned some minority language rights for Serbs because of historical oppression (1991 war), no way we would be able to join EU.

  2. oh fuck off… the law is not prohibiting publications in Russian, it just says that if a newspaper or magazine is printed in Russian, it needs to print and distribute an equivalent number of copies in Ukrainian.

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