By KYIV. Nov 20 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukrainian public organizations call on the authorities not to weaken the mechanisms for protecting the state language under the pretext of European integration.
“Noting the importance of Ukraine’s European integration and supporting efforts to speedily begin negotiations on Ukraine’s membership in the EU, we, representatives of Ukrainian public organizations and movements, consider it necessary to draw the attention of the Ukrainian authorities to the inadmissibility of carrying out, under the pretext of European integration, any actions aimed at revising language legislation and weakening mechanisms for protecting the state language,” said Anastasia Rozlutska, founder of the E-Mova project, in a joint statement published on Facebook.
The applicants consider the European Commission’s demand to Ukraine for additional changes to the legislation on national minorities, as well as laws on the state language, education and media, to be unjustified and far-fetched.
“We see a substitution of concepts and dangerous attempts to artificially contrast the protection of the Ukrainian language as a state language with the rights of national minorities in order to create a pretext for putting pressure on Ukraine and putting forward obviously unacceptable demands,” the message says.
Among other things, it is noted that the biased conclusions of the Venice Commission played a destructive role, in which the body went far beyond the scope of the subject of consideration – the law on national minorities – and approved “openly absurd recommendations divorced from reality for changes in the laws on language, education and media.”
“We understand the need to harmonize Ukrainian legislation with the values and law of the EU and support the necessary legislative changes. However, all EU requirements for Ukraine and assessments of progress in their implementation must be based on real facts, and not on insinuations imposed from Moscow or Budapest. Ukraine’s implementation of any demands based on such insinuations are a road to nowhere, threatening the foundations of the constitutional order, national unity and security of Ukraine,” the applicants emphasized.
In this regard, public organizations believe that the revision of the law “On ensuring the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the state language” and the law “On Media” is unacceptable, and they are also confident in the need to stop giving in to language norms in educational legislation.
“The Ukrainian side must clearly and reasonably convey the above positions to its European partners and, together with EU representatives, develop effective mechanisms to counter pressure from forces that, in the interests of Russia, seek to destroy European unity from within,” the statement says.
