Parubiy says there will be no changes in language article of education law
Verkhovna Rada Chairman Andriy Parubiy has said that no changes will be made to Article 7 "Language of Instruction" in Ukraine's law on education, the parliament's press service has reported.
Parubiy said at a conference dedicated to Local Self-Government Day in Lviv region on Saturday, December 9, that he had a conversation with representatives of the Venice Commission, "and it was agreed that the seventh article of the law on education will not be amended." "It will remain in the wording adopted," he added.
He recalled that round table discussions had been held before the adoption of the education law and their participants could not come to a common opinion. Therefore, Parubiy said, when considering the law on education, he created a working group, due to which "we managed to get a compromise wording, which, on the one hand, protects the language of national minorities, and, on the other hand, makes the study of the state language an obligatory condition for all."
He said that the issue of national identity and historical memory had become a key task for the Ukrainian parliament of the current convocation, including for him as parliament speaker.
As reported, the Ukrainian law on education came into force on September 28. 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. The commission noted that the issues of the content and scope of rights are exclusively within the competence of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, and a number of questions concerning the use of languages should be resolved by special laws.