Hungary welcomes Ukrainian bill on minority education rights

Hungarian Foreign Minister Anita Orbán welcomed the submission to Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada of a bill on the educational rights of national minorities.

She wrote about this on October 2 on social network X following a conversation with Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Vsevolod Chentsov.

On the evening of October 1, Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science announced that a bill “On amendments to certain laws of Ukraine on ensuring the educational rights of indigenous peoples of Ukraine and persons belonging to national minorities (communities) of Ukraine” had been submitted to the Verkhovna Rada.

“Ensuring the rights of national minorities, particularly in the field of education, is part of Ukraine’s obligations within the framework of the negotiation process for Ukraine’s accession to the EU. This is one of the steps that will allow the further opening of negotiations on the next clusters,” the ministry noted.

The day before, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, speaking to journalists, said that at his meeting with Anita Orbán in New York he had discussed steps toward Ukraine’s further progress toward EU membership. According to him, the proposed changes to education legislation will apply to all national minorities, not only the Hungarian one.

One of the bill’s authors, chairman of the parliamentary Committee on Education, Science and Innovation Serhiy Babak, stressed that the Ukrainian language was and remains the state language of the educational process.

“The bill does not change this. At the same time, it more clearly defines how, alongside the state language, the languages of indigenous peoples of Ukraine and national minorities that are official languages of the EU may be used,” he wrote on the evening of October 1 on Telegram.

According to clarifications from the Ministry of Education and Science, the bill provides for the possibility of instruction in the languages of national minorities and indigenous peoples alongside the Ukrainian language. The additional rights apply to languages that are official languages of the EU, as well as to the languages of Ukraine’s indigenous peoples. The Russian language is not included in this list.

When exactly the bill will be considered by the Verkhovna Rada has not yet been announced.