A member of the Regions Party parliamentary faction, Vadym Kolesnichenko, has said that the law of Ukraine on the principles of the state language policy was adopted without consideration of proposals submitted by the Justice Ministry of Ukraine, the OSCE, the Venice Commission, and the parliament's experts, and blamed the opposition for this.
The MP stated this in the explanatory note to a bill on amendments to
the language bill he registered in the parliament on Sept. 6.
“During the consideration of the bill in the parliament at second
reading and as a whole, proposals from the Justice Ministry of Ukraine,
the Venice Commission, the OSCE, and experts of the Verkhovna Rada of
Ukraine were not taken into account due to the blocking of the rostrum,
numerous attempts to interrupt the sittings, and threats to blow up and
burn the parliament by the opposition,” reads the document.
The deputy proposed a number of editorial corrections to the law, in
particular he proposed to replace the word “area” by the word
“territory,” and replace the phrase “group of individuals” by the phrase
“group of individuals that are citizens of Ukraine.”
Kolesnichenko also suggested that the process of implementation of
the state language policy should be co-funded from the national and
local budgets.
In addition, the author of the law proposed to apply the provisions
of the law to regional languages and national minority languages even if
they are native to less than 10% of Ukrainian citizens from the general
population of a specific territory, but “in certain cases and taking
into account specific situations.”
As reported, the Verkhovna Rada passed the language bill on July 3, 2012.
On August 8, 2012, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych signed the
bill into law and instructed the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine to form
a working group for the development of proposals to improve the
language legislation of Ukraine.
The law took effect on August 10, 2012. According to it, a language
may be provided with the status of a regional language given that the
number of people considering it their native language exceeds 10% of the
total population of the region.
