The education law enacted in Ukraine does not limit the rights of ethnic minorities for receiving education in the native language and does not breach Ukrainian international obligations in compliance with the conventions, which the country has joined, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze has said.
“I am convinced that the Council of Europe inspection, which we ourselves are initiatively asking for, will confirm this very soon, putting an end to external manipulations over this important issue of our domestic policy,” she wrote on her Facebook page on Tuesday.
The ethnic minorities’ right to receive education in the native language is envisioned at pre-school education institutions, primary school, and secondary school, where a number of subjects will be taught in the ethnic minorities’ languages, she said.
“It is a language and literature of an ethnic minority (sub-paragraph 6, point 1, Article 7 of the law), one or several subjects in the EU languages (de facto, in the language of an ethnic minority, point 4, Article 7 of the law). Dictionaries in the ethnic minorities’ languages will be added in the cycle of mathematics and natural (sciences) for parallel learning of terms in two languages,” the deputy prime minister said.
Over all the years following the independence’s reinstatement Ukraine guarantees the observance of the rights of all ethnic minorities, but the situation, when Ukrainian citizens, upon graduation from a state school, can neither read, nor write, nor even speak Ukrainian is unacceptable, Klympush-Tsintsadze said.
“The point is already not about rights, but precisely discrimination. Such graduates are deprived of the right of choice of higher education, are deprived of the possibilities of the choice to realize themselves in different areas, and are subsequently destined to marginal position in the society,” she said.
Furthermore, the deputy prime minister regretted the Hungarian side’s reaction to the law enactment.
“I am profoundly disappointed with unjustifiably emotional and, to my mind, short-sighted statement issued by the Hungarian Foreign Ministry with respect to the Ukrainian education law. It is a pity that the partners’ desire to sort out the essence and important details is not seen,” Klympush-Tsintsadze said.
“No one from the outside either in the East or in the West will ever decide for us, in what we are integrating,” she said.
As reported, the Hungarian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday stated the country’s intention to block Ukraine-EU rapprochement due to the education law.
On September 25, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed the education law passed by the Verkhovna Rada on September 5.
Among other things, the law stipulates that the state language is a language of learning at educational institutions, but one or several subjects in two or more languages, namely, the state language, English and other European Union official languages can be taught in compliance with the educational program. People, who belong to ethnic minorities, are guaranteed the right for learning in the native language along with the Ukrainian language in separate groups of communal pre-school and primary school institutions.
Ukraine stands ready to deliver a language-related article of the education law to the Council of Europe for an inspection to confirm the absence of international obligations’ breaches, Ukrainian Minister of Education and Science Lilia Hrynevych said.
