You're reading: Estimates: Language law could cost $2 billion

Politics and ethics aside, the numbers around the new controversial language law look like it's going to cost Ukrainians a lot. More than they can afford, in fact, both in direct and indirect costs.

The authors of the language law never made the required calculations in their support papers that would allow the parliament and people to assess its direct costs. The only official assessment came from Valentyna Brusylo, head of the department for financing of social sector of the Finance Ministry.

“The authors of the law failed to give calculations of the cost of its implementation, but, according to our own assessment, it will cost from Hr 12 billion ($1.5 billion) to Hr 17 billion ($2.1 billion) per year,” she told reporters in June. Neither her ministry nor the parliament’s budget committee recommended its approval.

Nevertheless, it was approved on July 3 and is now awaiting signature by the speaker and the president.

Since then, Brusylo stopped talking to journalists, and even implied in the telephone conversation with TVi channel on July 5 that she feared for her job because of her public opposition to the law that clearly needed to be approved for political reasons.

Once signed, the law will open a Pandora’s box of various expenses within the so-called “administrative territories with regional languages.” Regions where 10 percent or more population speaks other languages than Ukrainian, automatically become such territories, according to Danylo Getmantsev, president of Jurimex law company.

The 2001 national census will become the basis for deciding which territories have what regional language.  Russian will become official in at least 11 regions, but more exotic languages will also have an elevated status. In Chernivtsi, for example, Romanian will become the regional language because 12.5 percent of population identify themselves as Romanians. In Zakarpattya, Hungarians make up 12.1 percent of the population, while in Crimea 12 percent are Crimean Tatars.

Moreover, because of a loophole in the law, any town or even district within a village can choose their own administrative language, and the state is required to pick up the bills that incur.

The cash will be needed for a whole range of official activities, from producing all official documents in both the national and the regional language, to paying for translators in courts, to training a sufficient number of teachers of regional languages for all schools because the law guarantees education in both the state and the regional language. The list of expenses goes on. (See sidebar 1 for more details below.)

Svyatoslav Pavlyuk, a civic activist with a long history in non-government sector, says it’s also clear from the law that a lot of training of state officials will be required, and the state will have to pay.

“The number of state officials, according to the latest data … from 2010 was 392,000 people. Add the 600,000 in the law enforcement structures, doctors and communal services workers – they also have to speak regional languages,” says Pavluyk.

He said he made his own calculations how much the training alone might cost if the law is enforced full-scale: it’s between a whopping Hr 12.7 billion to 19.2 billion. “This is just for snap training of the officials,” Pavlyuk emphasizes.

Because of the prohibitive cost, it’s clear to even the Party of Regions that the law will only work selectively. Olena Bondarenko, a parliament member, predicts that the two main areas where people will demand its application will be the ability to communicate with officials in your own language, and the ability to educate children at school and kindergarten. “These are the two most important areas” that people come across every day, she says.

But the direct cost of the law is just the tip of the iceberg.

Experts say it has caused billions of losses to the Ukrainians by creating a diversion and allowing the pro-presidential majority to push through a whole range of laws.

On July 4 alone, when the opposition was rallying in the streets and boycotting parliamentary hearings, a total of 20 laws, 2 rulings and 7 drafts were passed that might become highly damaging for state finances. To make matters worse, video footage of that day clearly shows that there were only 73 deputies physically present in the session hall, pressing buttons for their neighbors to come up with the required 226 vote majority – an act deemed illegal by the Constitution and a number of laws. .

The July 4 laws approved expenses on anything from the purchase of video cameras for polling stations for the Oct. 28 elections at Hr 30,000 per piece, to subsidies for coal mining in the Party of Regions’ home base in the east of the country, worth some Hr 2.2 billion.

The total losses from that day’s vote are estimated at Hr 300 billion, says Pavlyuk. (See sidebar 2 below). “They purposefully approved the language law to force people onto the streets and on the quiet, to shovel the cash,” he wrote in his emotional blog on that day.

Vitaliy Shabunin, an expert on state procurement who works for non-government organizations, says that the new version of law on state procurement has the potential to cause losses to the budget worth some Hr 250 billion.

The old law required publishing the results of all state procurement contracts, and in the past the publicity  helped to uncover a number of serious violations by state officials, which were investigated by journalists and, in some cases, by the prosecutors.

“Now, the boys [in the Rada], shut it off with one push of a button. Now, they’re robbing us and we don’t even know it,” says  Shabunin.

He predicts that every ministry will now start a private company to buy supplies from at sky-high prices, doling taxpayers’ cash into private pockers. And all the information will remain secret. “This is the triumph of kleptocracy,” he says.

Yaroslav Dzhordzhyk, a member of the budget committee in the Rada warns that many of the expert estimates should be taken with caution because they seem too overblown. “The total state budget is about Hr 400 billion. I think the sum [of damage] is a lot smaller, but in any case we’re talking about tens of billions of hryvnias,” he says.

Sidebar 1: Requirements of the language law

What the state will have to pay for to fulfill the law “On basis of state language policy.”
•    Publishing local government acts in regional languages
•    Production of stamps, templates of documents etc in regional languages
•    Translation of procedural, court documents
•    Staff of translators/interpreters
•    Production and distribution of audio and video in regional languages
•    Issue of education certificates in two languages
•    Education in regional languages
•    Compulsory introduction of the regional language at all schools
•    Training of school teachers
•    Additional staff of spacialized teachers
•    New licenses for TV and radio companies

Source: Law “On basis of state language policy,” expert support papers by the parliament’s budget committee.

Sidebar 2: Cost of the language law

How much July 4 vote in Verkhovna Rada will cost Ukrainians
Estimates by Svyatoslav Pavlyuk derived by analyzing laws passed on that day.

Secret state procurements         Hr 250- 270 billion
Chinese commodity loan        Hr 24.3
Video cameras for polling stations    Hr 1 billion
Tax-free construction of railway to Boryspil    Hr 320 million
Subsidies for  coal and peat mining    Hr 2.2 billion
Additional money for General Prosecutor Hr 174 million
Additional money for Justice Ministry        Hr 1 million

Other laws that incur budget expenses that are difficult to estimate:
•    Payments to the military in case of death of injury increased up to 24 wages. The same law introduces 83 pages worth of privileges for the military.
•    New rules for sale/privatization of military property introduced.
•    The state Agrarian Fund is allowed to dole out state property that belongs to the fund.
•    Justice Ministry gets a Hr 1 million in cuts that used to pay for free defense lawyers in criminal cases.
•    The rules for election of parliament speaker changed. They will now be elected by simple majority in an open vote.
•    Rules for state control of transportation, delivery and storage of oil and gas changed.

Kyiv Post editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at [email protected]