31 July 2012, 18:40
This was stressed in the memorandum of law "On the Issue of Ukraine?s Ratification of the European Charter" sent by the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada to the President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych together with the letter stating the stand of the Chairman of the Parliament regarding the Law of Ukraine "On the Principles of the State Language Policy".
The text of the document:
"According to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages of 1992 "a) the term ‘regional languages or minority languages? implies the following languages:
i) the one that are traditionally used within certain territory of the state by the citizens of this state who form a group that is less in number then the rest of the population of this state; and
ii) differs from the official language (languages) of this state; does not include the dialects of the official language (languages) or the language of immigrants;
b) the term "territory, where the regional language or the minority language is used" implies the geographical area where such language is the means of communication for certain number of people and that justifies the implementation of various protective and promotional measures provided in this Charter".
The attention should be paid to the following.
The notion of "traditionally used" in the context of the preamble, which says that some of these languages are under threat of extinction, should be understood as such that have ancient historical roots regarding there emerge and use on this territory and are not dominant or competitive in regard to the official state language.
In this very context of possible extinction of these languages, as it was mentioned in the preamble, they need to be protected and developed. However, they "should not damage the official languages".
In this context, the combination of the abovementioned provisions regarding extinct languages, as well as measures preventing the damage to the official language is the starting point to understand the text of the Charter.
In cases when the multilateral international agreement, developed by the Council of Europe, is extremely important and, at the same time, complex in its content its interpretative harmonic component is the so-called Explanatory Report (hereafter ER) to the Agreement. It provides detailed explanation of certain provisions of the agreement to avoid misunderstanding of its content.
First of all, the ER states that languages, the number of speakers of which can vary drastically but "the common feature of which is the larger or smaller degree of threat to their existence, are subject to the provisions of the Charter (clause 2 of the ER) and that are the part of "Europe?s cultural heritage at risk" (clause 10 of the ER).
Having defined the main criteria, under which the object of protective measures is determined, the authors proceeded from the point that the list should depend on real state of each language (clauses 23, 28, 39, 41 and 46 of the ER).
This approach is more fully disclosed in clauses 13 and 14 of the ER.
Taking into consideration the real state of the language situation in the country, and according to the clause 24 of the ER, the content of the Law "On Ratification of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages" of May 15, 2003 does not correspond to the principles of the Charter. It standardizes the needs of different languages, thus, neutralizing the objectives pursued by the Charter.
Apart from this, it should be taken into account that the term "territory, where the regional language is used" means, first of all, geographic area and cannot be substituted by the notion "administrative unit" (clause 59 of the ER).
Minority languages, in terms of ideological nature of the Convention, should be perceived as the languages of the linguistic minority that is situated on this territory.
In this context, the official state language can find itself in the position of the minority language.
The need to reconsider the list of languages is explained by the real state of the languages that certainly need to be protected.
The provision of the Law on Ratification of the European Charter regarding binding languages to the national minorities also needs to be amended.
Summing up, it should be mentioned that the Law on Ratification of the European Charter needs to be amended taking into account all the above said. However, amendments should be preceded by the conclusion of experts on language issues. An example of such carefully balanced approach could be Germany?s ratification statement regarding the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages".