A council of experts on translating laws into the Belarusian language has decided that the Marriage and Family Code should be translated in the first place, the national legal web portal stated on Wednesday.

"The Marriage and Family Code has been determined as the first piece of legislation to be translated into the Belarusian language in the framework of the council's work. Another possibility considered for the current year is that of translating the Election and the Civil Codes," the statement said.

The council was set up by the National Legal Information Center at the behest of the country's President Alexander Lukashenko. Today it met for the first time.

"The translated codes, once approved by the expert council, will be published on the national legal internet-portal of the Republic of Belarus," the Center said.

It was reported that during a "Big Talk" on March 1, Lukashenko ordered that the laws be published in Russian and Belarusian. "If we publish our laws in two languages, this can be done. (...) This will be it. And we will solve this problem once and for all," Lukashenko said, commenting on a remark by the Belarusian Language Society's chairman Oleg Trusov that "judges do not understand Belarusian, that a translator has to be invited, and that laws are published only in Russian."