The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a decision with recommendations to Ukraine following the urgent debate. It was reported by the "Yevropeiska pravda." 82 deputies voted for the adoption of the document with the amendments, 11 voted against, 17 abstained.
The PACE decision strongly condemns the adoption of the law on education by the Verkhovna Rada changing article 7 (on the language of education) without consulting with representatives of national minorities. The Assembly also appealed to Ukraine with a request to take into account all the recommendations of the Venice Commission without exception, as well as to make appropriate amendments to the law on education.
As a result of the debate, a majority of the proposals of the Romanian and Hungarian deputies were adopted.
In particular, Hungarians and Romanians opposed the idea of "mixed instruction," with 60% of subjects taught in Ukrainian, and 40% of minority languages. Also, all references that instruction "exclusively in a minority language" (without teaching some subjects in the state language) harms the children themselves by affecting their competitiveness in the labor market and during admission to higher education institutions were removed from the document.
The Hungarian amendment, whereby they wanted to remove from the document the reference to the right of Ukraine to protect the state language, as well as the fact that language unites the state, was rejected (39 votes against, 42 votes for).
The proposal of the parliamentarians from Romania and Hungary, who tried to remove from the document the reference to the absence of exclusively Ukrainian state schools (or with teaching exclusively in the languages of other minorities) in their own countries, was also rejected (37 to 40 votes).
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