The European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) considers it possible to amend the article on the language of instruction in Ukraine's law on education in order to remove possible discrimination of languages that do not belong to the languages of the countries of the European Union, according to an opinion of December 8, which was published on December 11.

The document says that Article 7 (on the language of instruction) provides for the opportunity to teach one or more disciplines in two or more languages – Ukrainian, English, other official languages of the European Union.

"The intention of the Ukrainian authorities seems, indeed, to use this provision to also enable the teaching of other subjects in these languages. This could be an acceptable solution for these languages, but only if there are sufficient guarantees in the implementing legislation, specified following adequate consultation of minorities, that the scope of this teaching will be sufficient to enable the students to attain a high level of oral and written proficiency, enabling them also to address complex issues," reads the opinion.

At the same time, the Venice Commission believes that the results of the current bilateral talks with minorities' kin-states could provide useful input to the implementation of Article 7 in this respect.

"However, paragraph 4 of Article 7 provides no solution for languages which are not official languages of the EU, in particular the Russian language, as the most widely used language apart from the state language. The less favorable treatment of these languages is difficult to justify and therefore raises issues of discrimination," the commission said.

It considers it possible to make changes to this article.

"Having regard to the above considerations, the appropriate solution would certainly be to amend Article 7 and replace this provision with a more balanced and more clearly worded one. In particular, the issue of discriminatory treatment of other minority languages - which are not official languages of the EU - would have to be addressed in this context," reads the document.

The Ukrainian Education and Science Ministry told Interfax-Ukraine that the major point of the opinion is the last final paragraph (No. 126), which contains the recommendations of the commission and based on which the Council of Europe subsequently monitors the country's implementation of the recommendations.

"None of the recommendations in this paragraph provides for changes to Article 7 of the education law, while the Education Ministry fully agrees, inter alia, with changes to the transitional provisions of the law on the extension of the transition period, a detailed description of models for the implementation of Article 7 in the law on general secondary education," the ministry said.

It also added that special attention would be paid to improving the methods and quality of teaching the Ukrainian language in institutions with the language of instruction for national minorities, which is envisaged in the recommendations.

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.