The ongoing worsening of the access of Ukraine’s national minorities to education in their mother tongues: need for a follow-up to Parliamentary Assembly Resolution 2189 (2017)

Motion for a resolution | Doc. 15334 | 25 June 2021

Signatories:

Mr Titus CORLĂŢEAN, Romania, SOC ; Mr Viorel-Riceard BADEA, Romania, EPP/CD ; Ms Mónika BARTOS, Hungary, EC/DA ; Mr Olivier BECHT, France, ALDE ; Mr Ervin BUSHATI, Albania, SOC ; Mr Boriss CILEVIČS, Latvia, SOC ; Mr Damien COTTIER, Switzerland, ALDE ; Mr Andi-Lucian CRISTEA, Romania, SOC ; Mr Piero FASSINO, Italy, SOC ; Mr Bernard FOURNIER, France, EPP/CD ; Mr Pierre-Alain FRIDEZ, Switzerland, SOC ; Ms Anamaria GAVRILĂ, Romania, EC/DA ; Mr Gerardo GIOVAGNOLI, San Marino, SOC ; Mr Antonio GUTIÉRREZ, Spain, SOC ; Mr Claude KERN, France, ALDE ; Ms Elvira KOVÁCS, Serbia, EPP/CD ; Mr Tiny KOX, Netherlands, UEL ; Ms Dumitrina MITREA, Romania, EC/DA ; Ms Marica MONTEMAGGI, San Marino, SOC ; Ms Mariella MULARONI, San Marino, EPP/CD ; Mr Frank SCHWABE, Germany, SOC

This motion has not been discussed in the Assembly and commits only those who have signed it.

The Parliamentary Assembly adopted Resolution 2189 (2017) “The new Ukrainian law on education: a major impediment to the teaching of national minorities’ mother tongues” in which it made a number of recommendations to the Ukrainian authorities in order to ensure respect for the rights of persons belonging to national minorities to be taught in their own languages, in accordance with the relevant European standards, especially the Framework Convention on the protection of national minorities and the European Charter for Minority or Regional Languages.

Despite the two opinions of the Venice Commission on this subject, on 2017 and 2019, which stated that the legitimate action of Ukraine to carry out measures meant to enhance the official language cannot go against the language rights of persons belonging to national minorities, Ukraine has adopted two other laws – on the state language, in 2019, and on the secondary education, in 2020 – both of them with a serious impact on the use of minority languages.

Unfortunately, the Ukrainian authorities have continued to clearly violate the right to education in the mother tongue for the persons belonging to national minorities. As a matter of fact, the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, submitted in May 2021 a bill to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on the indigenous peoples, recognising only the Crimean Tatars, Karaite and Krymchak peoples the right to develop their ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious identity. If adopted, this law will literally deny the right to education in their mother tongue to all the persons belonging to national minorities having a kin-state, such as Romanian, Hungarian, Polish, Bulgarian, Greek and Russian ethnics.

All these worrying developments concerning the observance of the right to education for national minorities need a firm updated response from the Assembly, as follow-up to its Resolution 2189 (2017).