The rights of Russians of Ukraine and Hungarians of Transcarpathia: Language will bring it to Strasbourg
The decision of the Venice Commission on the Ukrainian educational law is considered a victory by both Kyiv and Budapest, which are not going to change their tough positions. The matter will obviously continue in Strasbourg.
On December 8, the media published the text of the conclusion of the Council of Europe Commission “For Democracy through Law,” better known as the “Venice Commission,” regarding the new Ukrainian law on education, which has caused complaints from almost all neighboring countries of Ukraine.
The harshest critics of educational innovations in Kyiv were official Budapest and the Hungarian community of Transcarpathia. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó directly stated at the beginning of autumn: until the law is repealed, his country will block Ukraine’s integration into the EU and NATO, as well as all international initiatives that are important for Kyiv.
The threat turned out to be not unfounded: the meeting of the Ukraine-NATO commission scheduled for December 6 did not take place at the request of Hungary, and on December 7, at a meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the OSCE countries, Mr. Szijjarto demanded that a permanent mission be sent to the Transcarpathian region of Ukraine. According to the Hungarian side, monitoring is necessary due to tension in the area.
The head of Hungarian diplomacy once again repeated that the adoption by the Ukrainian authorities of amendments limiting the rights of national minorities to education in their native languages was a disappointment for the Hungarian side.
“The new law absolutely contradicts Ukraine’s bilateral and multilateral obligations, including OSCE commitments,” the minister said, recalling the existence of “nationalist sentiments” in Ukraine and expressing concern about tensions in the Transcarpathian region.
“There were anti-Hungarian demonstrations there, which were joined by other cities in Ukraine, during which national symbols were violated and anti-Hungarian slogans were chanted,” Szijjártó emphasized in Vienna.
On December 8, after a meeting with representatives of Ukraine at a meeting of the Association Council in Brussels, when the text of the conclusion on the educational law had already been made public, Szijjártó said: “Ukraine must fully implement all the comments and opinions of the Venice Commission, which, as I understand, Ukraine intends to do.” .
By and large, this can be considered a compromise, since Budapest previously demanded the unconditional withdrawal of the Ukrainian law on education, and stated that he was not going to react to the decision of the Venice Commission if it was in favor of Kyiv.
At the same time, in Kyiv they consider the conclusion of the legal experts of the Council of Europe to be their complete and unconditional victory, and are not going to make any compromises.
As the Minister of Education Liliya Grinevich emphasized, the recommendations of the Venice Commission do not contain demands to change Article 7 of the education law, which proclaims Ukrainian the only language of education in secondary school (with the exception of studying the language and culture of national minorities).
But the minister and the patriotic public were especially delighted by the preamble of the commission’s conclusion, which states that “promoting the strengthening of the state language and its obligatory nature for all citizens is a legitimate and laudable goal of the state.”
However, already in the next paragraph of the preamble it is emphasized that “Article 7 of the new law, by reducing the volume of education in minority languages, especially after completion of primary school, has caused strong criticism and protests, both at the domestic and international levels. This criticism is largely justified, on a number of grounds. The version of the article that was adopted differs significantly from the draft that was discussed with minorities. Article 7 contains important ambiguities and does not appear to ensure compliance with the key principles necessary to implement the framework law in the context of the country's international and constitutional obligations."
But the most important thing is that Europe refused to accept a kind of “bribe” from the Kyiv authorities, who wrote in paragraph 4 of the “language” article the possibility of teaching subjects other than the language and culture of national minorities in the official languages of the EU in high schools.
The Venice Commission clearly defined the main goal of the education law, which diplomats and officials are trying to veil, but politicians are raising to the shield - the complete disappearance of the Russian language from the Ukrainian education system.
“This clause does not provide a solution for languages that are not official languages of the EU, in particular for Russian, as the most widely used language in Ukraine after the state one. A less favorable attitude towards these languages is difficult to justify and therefore raises the question of whether the norm is discriminatory,” the Venice Commission stated bluntly.
It was the recognition by the structure of the Council of Europe of the Russian language as “the most widely used language in Ukraine after the state language” that was widely picked up by the Russian media. However, the Venice Commission only had the courage to say “ah” - among the recommendations there is no longer a word about the Russian language, we are only talking about “making full use of the flexibility provided for in paragraph 4 of Art. 7, when adopting implementing legislation to ensure a significant level of teaching in the official EU languages for the minorities concerned.” And the fact that the Russian language is not mentioned in this paragraph, unlike Art. 10 of the Constitution of Ukraine - these are the personal problems of millions of Russian-speaking citizens of the country.
Speaking about the “constitutional obligations” of Ukraine, the Venice Commission clearly had in mind only Article 53 of the Basic Law of the country, which states: “Citizens belonging to national minorities are, in accordance with the law, guaranteed the right to study in their native language or to study their native language in state and municipal educational institutions or through national cultural societies" It is recommended that Ukraine exempt private schools from the new language requirements in accordance with Article 13 of the Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities of 1 February 1995 (which states that, within the framework of their educational systems, the Parties recognize the right of persons belonging to a national minority to create and run their own private education and training institutions).
It seems that it is on the basis of this point of recommendations that Hungary will try to build a parallel system of secondary education in Ukraine for its minority. Peter Szijjártó said on December 8 in Brussels that “we can be happy with anything related to the education law, but only if the Hungarian national minority is also happy with it.” On the same day, the deputy chairman of the Kyiv Society of Hungarians, Tibor Tompa, noted that “I have not seen that what the Venice Commission said appeared in Ukrainian sources: in private educational institutions, national minorities can study all subjects in the Ukrainian language. Therefore, I think that in this case there is a way out for those Hungarians who want their children to study all subjects in Hungarian.”
However, if de facto Budapest can agree to a similar compromise with Kiev, then the official position of Hungary is unlikely to change, and this country will demand, if not the complete repeal of the education law, then at least a radical change in its language article. Moreover, this can be implemented both through direct pressure on Ukraine on sensitive issues (for example, threatening in the future not to vote for the resolution on the status of Crimea, which Hungary supported on November 15, 2017, already at the height of the conflict with Ukraine), and through European judicial structures. For example, Hungary may try to cancel the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU in the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg, citing a violation of Kyiv’s obligations not to reduce the rights of national minorities.
And the Hungarian minority itself may try to repeal the Ukrainian education law by appealing to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
Moreover, if for Ukrainian Hungarians this path is optional, then for Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine it is the only one, since the Kyiv authorities are not going to make any compromises with them.
After all, even before the adoption of the new law, teaching in Russian was completely prohibited in schools in the city of Khmelnitsky, and the decision even concerned the study of Russian language and literature as subjects, including as part of elective classes.
The decision to transfer all Russian schools in the Kherson region to Ukrainian was made back in July 2017, and at the moment only three schools have not implemented it.
In other regions of Ukraine, in particular, in the Odessa and Dnepropetrovsk regions and the city of Kyiv, the Russian language is being squeezed out of schools on the basis of statements from parents, and for this only a few “activists” are enough.
But the reverse process - opening classes with Russian as the language of instruction - is impossible in the current situation, regardless of the number of willing students and their parents.
And although so far European structures generally have a favorable attitude towards massive violations of human rights by the Kiev authorities (both on a national basis, as in the situation with the law on education, and on a territorial basis, as in the case of non-payment of pensions to residents of Donbass), but the situation may change quite dramatically.
For example, on October 12, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg recognized over 12 thousand complaints from Ukrainian citizens against their own state, accumulated over many years, to be satisfied.
If Kiev ignores the urgent recommendations of the Venice Commission regarding the law on education - as has been happening for several years now with the law on “lustration” - then Strasbourg’s reaction could be much more prompt, because here we are not talking about several thousand officials from the Yanukovych era, but about hundreds of thousands of students who are now deprived of the right to study in their native language.
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