The Venice Commission does not agree with Budapest's demands for the exclusive use of the Hungarian language in the educational process for the Hungarian population in Ukraine, but insists that Kyiv provide guarantees for minority languages.

"The Venice Commission does not agree with Hungary's demand to keep in Ukraine the possibility of teaching exclusively in Hungarian," Venice Commission Secretary Thomas Markert said in an interview with the Yevropeiska Pravda media outlet, which was published on Thursday, January 25.

The Venice Commission believes that the students of the region should also study the Ukrainian language.

"We do not share this position. We believe that the state can switch from a purely Hungarian-speaking system to a mixed one, where part of hours will be taught in Hungarian and part in Ukrainian. Moreover, it is even better for the students themselves if they receive education in two languages," he said.

Markert also noted that criticism from Hungary was justified as long as there were no guarantees for minority languages. He stressed the need to adopt by-laws to establish such guarantees.

"At the same time, the state language should also be taught in sufficient amount, in particular, so that a person could integrate, be competitive in the labor market - and for this purpose it is necessary to speak well in Ukrainian, and not only in Hungarian. Bilingual education in itself is an advantage," he said.

As reported, the Ukrainian law on education came into force on September 28, 2017.

Among other things, the law stipulates that the state language is a language of learning at educational institutions, but one or several subjects in two or more languages, namely, the state language, English and other European Union official languages can be taught in compliance with the educational program.

People, who belong to ethnic minorities, are guaranteed the right for learning in the native language along with the Ukrainian language in separate groups of municipal pre-school and primary school institutions.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry sent the education law for examination by the Venice Commission.

On December 8, the Ukrainian Education and Science Ministry reported that the Venice Commission had not supported Hungary's accusation of narrowing the rights of national minorities in the article on the language of instruction in Ukraine's law on education.

On December 11, the ministry said that it was grateful to the Venice Commission for its work on providing conclusions on the language of instruction article of the education law, was ready to implement its recommendations and had already developed three models for the implementation of this article in the law on general secondary education.

On December 13, Ukrainian Education and Science Minister Lilia Hrynevych said that a draft law on secondary education with explanations on the use of languages in education, in accordance with the conclusions of the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission), was to be submitted for consideration by the Verkhovna Rada in the spring of 2018.

"Now, given these conclusions, we need to formulate models of education for national minorities in the law on general secondary education. That is, we will not make any changes to Article 7 [on the language of instruction] of the law on education," she told journalists.