[lg policy] EU: Commission will ‘closely monitor’ Slovak language law situation

[Harold Schiffman]

Commission will ‘closely monitor’ Slovak language law situation
Friday, 27 November 2009

In Tuesday’s Parliament debate with Commissioner for Multilingualism
Leonard Orban, initiated by acting national minority and regional
language Intergroup leader Kinga Gal, the Commissioner said that the
Commission will “closely monitor” the situation with the
implementation of the controversial Slovak language law. The law
restricts the usage of languages other than Slovak in the public
sector, backed with the threat of fines up to 5,000 euro set to be
imposed after January.  Commissioner Orban’s speech reflected the new
scenario after the Lisbon Treaty’s ratification, placing linguistic
and national minority rights firmly within the broader framework of
human rights and indicating the position that the Commission will take
on the issue in future.

“Member States remain therefore the decision-makers with respect to
their internal language policy, including on regional and minority
languages.’ He said, continuing, “The protection of persons belonging
to national minorities is an integral part of the respect for human
rights, which is one of the principles on which the Union is founded,
as reflected in Article 6 of the EU Treaty. Member States should
therefore use all legal instruments available to them in order to
guarantee the rights of the persons belonging to national minorities
in accordance with their own constitutional order and their
obligations and commitments under international law. The latter
include, for example, the Council of Europe's European Charter for
Regional or Minority Languages, which provides a comprehensive
framework in this matter, and the recommendations of the Organisation
for Security and Cooperation in Europe, as also recalled by the
European Parliament on previous occasions."

The following debate discussed many matters affecting national and
linguistic minorities in today’s Europe with comments from Basque,
Welsh and Catalan MEPs. However, the focus of the debate remained the
Slovak language law issue with many MEPs strongly criticising it and
pointing to its discriminatory nature. In response, Commissioner Orban
underlined how the policy of multilingualism can help to build
bridges.

On the Slovak law he stated that: “On the Community level I will
stress the following. This law will be applied broadly and at the
moment its almost impossible to evaluate all the possible
repercussions of the application of this law. The implementation of
the law is the key issue and in this context I would like to underline
that the European Commission is going to closely monitor the
implementation of the Slovak law and we are going to monitor the way
in which the law will function.” (Davyth Hicks, Eurolang-EBLUL 2009)

Watch the EP debate in full, see under 'Subjects', 'Use of minority
languages...'

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/wps-europarl-internet/frd/vod/player?date=20091124&language=en

Commissioner Orban’s statement in full speaking_note_minority_language_use_2

http://www.eblul.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=249&Itemid=1
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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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