Hungary calls on Ukraine to “suspend the implementation of the Education Act instead of conducting an international campaign of lies” until it comes to an agreement with Transcarpathian Hungarians on all of the details, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó declared on Friday in a telephone statement to Hungarian news agency MTI.

The Minister attended a two-day informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in Sofia, which began on Thursday.

Mr. Szijjártó told the press that on Friday a meeting of prospective EU member states was held at which the parties discussed security issues relating to Europe. “The subject of security fundamentally includes the question of to what extent countries that are moving towards European integration respect European regulations, including the regulations on minorities”, he declared.

“Ukraine, which is aspiring to achieve European integration, has recently severely contravened the international laws on the protection of minorities, adherence to which is also strictly required by the European Union”, he added.

Ukraine has “launched an international campaign of lies against Hungary and Transcarpathian Hungarians”, Mr. Szijjártó said, explaining that “Transcarpathian Hungarians did not attend a meeting with the Ukrainian Government in Kiev at which negotiations on the Ukrainian Education Act took place in accordance with the requirements of the Venice Commission”.

In contrast, the reality is that the Ukrainian Government wanted to discuss with Transcarpathian Hungarians a new piece of legislation based on the already adopted Act. So they were not invited for a consultation on the Education Act, and if Transcarpathian Hungarians had attended that meeting “they would to all intents and purposes have accepted the Education Act”, which grossly contravenes international law and the rights of Transcarpathian Hungarians, and which the European Union and the Venice Commission have asked Ukraine to amend, he pointed out.

Hungary calls on Ukraine to “suspend the implementation of the Education Act instead of conducting an international campaign of lies” until it comes to an agreement with Transcarpathian Hungarians on all of the details”, Mr. Szijjártó emphasised, stressing that “Ukraine must finally begin talks with the Transcarpathian Hungarians”.

The Minister said that in his opinion Ukraine had launched the “campaign of lies” to cover the fact that “they are showing complete disregard for the ruling of the Venice Commission”. “They have in fact begun the implementation of the Education Act in view of the fact that they have informed Hungarian schools that world literature must be taught in Ukrainian beginning this September”, he added.

Several neighbouring countries, including Hungary, Romania and Poland, have protested against Article 7 of the new Ukrainian Education Act, which was signed by President Petro Poroshenko on 25 September 2017. This part of the Act, which would come into force in September 2020, states that the language of education in Ukraine shall be Ukrainian. In the interests of achieving this, national minorities will only be permitted to provide native language education in the first four years of school, and only in separate classes or groups in schools that are maintained by local authorities. Beginning in grade 5, all subjects will be taught in Ukrainian, although the legislation does allow one or two subjects to be taught in any one of the official languages of the European Union.

On 8 December 2017, the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission, which is made up of independent constitutional legal experts, issued an official opinion on the Ukrainian Education Act, according to which Ukraine’s aspirations of attempting to handle inequalities by ensuring that all of its citizens are fluent in the state language, Ukrainian, are legitimate, but the strong Ukrainian and international criticism of the stipulations of the Act relating to the restriction of the rights of minorities to receive education in their native language are justified.

(MTI)