On Thursday 12 October, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted a resolution in which it expresses its concern at the articles on education in minority languages in the law on education adopted in Ukraine on 5 September.
An emergency debate was called for on the subject at the start of Monday morning's session, by request of members of the Hungarian and Romanian delegations to PACE. This was against the backdrop of considerable tension: the Hungarian and Romanian parliaments have both adopted resolutions stating that this law will severely restrict the right to education in the language of these two countries, Budapest and Bucharest having both previously threatened Kiev with blocking Ukraine's European integration unless the law was amended.
The Ukrainian President, Petro Poroshenko, who was in Strasbourg on Tuesday, brought up the subject during his address before PACE. He stressed that the law was intended only to ensure equal opportunities for all children, by allowing each of them to learn in the official language, which is vital to access higher education and employment, whilst safeguarding the right to teaching in the minority language alongside instruction in Ukrainian until the end of primary education.
This law has been overly politicised, the Ukrainian President went on to say, pointing out that it had been sent to the Venice Commission for its opinion. He said that the Council of Europe's constitutional law experts would help to eliminate any controversy and that the Ukrainian government has pledged to bend to their recommendations.
PACE took note of this process, but said that it was not satisfied that it had not been launched before the adoption of a text which, it feels, was not the subject of proper consultations and will excessively reduce the recognised rights of national minorities.
All the same, PACE is aware that Ukrainian language minorities in its neighbouring countries are not permitted to receive monolingual education in their own language and do not benefit from arrangements aiming to promote bilingual education. It therefore calls on the authorities of the neighbouring countries to offer the Ukrainian communities similar arrangements to those they are calling for their own minorities. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)