Ukraine to restore Hungarian minority’s language rights

The Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal has proposed a new draft law that would improve the situation of minorities living in Ukraine. This could mean a lot in the coming months, especially now with the upcoming meeting between the European Union and Ukraine.

The new draft would grant more lenient rights to the education sector and would put an end to repressing the use of mother tongues among minorities.

The previous case

There has already been talk of an older draft law a while ago that would cause an even bigger rupture between Ukraine and Hungary. This older draft would limit the usage of minorities’ mother tongue and gradually increase the percentage of Ukrainian classes taught in minority schools, writes Telex.

This original draft would regulate the amount of Ukrainian classes in ascending order. This means that only in the first four classes can the mother tongue of the minority be spoken. After that, every four years, the number of Ukrainian class hours were to be increased by 20%. This means that by graduation, minority students could be studying in Ukrainian 60% of the time spent in school. The old law was mainly directed against the use of Russian, but it harmed the minorities greatly in the process.

The minority schools were all in danger of language restriction, which of course included Hungarian schools too. This restriction was one of the focal reasons of the Hungarian veto against Ukraine, which you can read more about HERE. Now, with the new draft in the motion, things have a chance of changing.

The new draft law

The new draft law would essentially eliminate some passages of the old draft. These old passages, according to the Hungarian government, make it impossible for the Hungarian community in Transcarpathia to learn in their mother tongue or use their mother tongue in general. The new draft law ensures that minorities can learn in their mother tongues until graduation.

There’s another new addition that the amendments specify, which is that the proposed provisions only apply to minorities that speak any official EU language. Thus excluding the Russian language, while improving relations with the other minorities that were badly affected by the previous law. The sanctioning of Russian is a goal for the Ukrainian government since 2014 and even more so since the start of the war.

What’s next?

Considering the war, Ukraine was granted candidate status last year on a proposal from the European Commission. Hungarian foreign minister Péter Szijjártó said on the issue that “Hungary will never be able to support Ukraine’s transatlantic and European integration as long as Hungarian schools in Transcarpathia are at risk.” However, with the new draft law, all of the 71 Transcarpathian Hungarian speaking schools could keep teaching students in Hungarian until they graduate. In the long term, this means Ukraine is one step closer to the hearts of Hungarians and also to joining the EU.

Read more about Hungarian relations to Ukraine HERE.

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