The Verkhovna Rada has adopted the law on the principles of the state language policy providing the official use of regional languages in the work of local governments if at least 10% of language speakers live in the territory. A total of 248 people's deputies with the required minimum of 226 have voted for draft law No 9073.
Despite the draft law was not on the Tuesday's agenda, Adam Martyniuk, the Verkhovna Rada's first deputy chairman asked the Parliament for passing the draft law in the first reading version, and the parliamentarians backed the proposal.
These are 190 people's deputies from the Party of Regions faction, 1 from the Our Ukraine - People's Self-Defense Bloc faction, 25 from the Communist Party faction, 19 from the People's Party faction, 2 from the Reforms for Future Group faction and 11 independent parliamentarians.
In the context of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages the law on the language policy envisages the measures to use 18 languages, notably, Russian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Armenian, Gagauz, Yiddish, Crimean Tatar, Moldavian, German, modern Greek, Polish, Romany (Gypsy), Romanian, Slovak, Hungarian, Rusyn, Karaim and Judeo-Crimean Tatar.
The law allows local councils to apply the measures to the language of a regional language group accounted for less than 10% of the population in the inhabited territory.
The law stipulates that a regional or a minority language spoken in a certain territory is used in the work of local bodies of power, local self-governments, in state educational and communal establishments and in other spheres of social life within and under the procedures determined by law.
The law states that the acts of the supreme bodies of state power shall be adopted in Ukrainian and officially published in the national language, Russian, and other regional or minority languages.
Under the law, passport data or the data in the document, which replaces it, shall be introduced in the Ukrainian language and in a regional or minority language.
The requirement for the language of instruction is determined on a mandatory basis due to the applications of students or their parents when they are enrolling for state and communal educational establishments.
At that, the educational establishment provides separate classes, groups where training is conducted in the language other than the language of instruction if there is a sufficient number of relevant applications.
Tests for external evaluation of the quality of education are prepared in Ukrainian, but at the request of an applicant they shall be translated into a regional or minority language (except for the Ukrainian language and literature).
The draft law was initiated for Vadym Kolesnichenko and Serhii Kivalov, MPs from the Party of Regions faction. As Ukrainian News reported, the Verkhovna Rada passed the first reading of the draft law on language policy on June 5.
The Parliament session was closed because of the MPs scuffling with each other: the opposition broke into the presidium to prevent adoption of the draft law. Then the people's deputies submitted more than 2,000 amendments to the draft law, but the Verkhovna Rada did not examine any.
