Slovak News Back to the news
Government Approves Running Measures for Language Act
Wednesday 16 December 2009 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, December 16 (TASR) - Unifying interpretations of the State Language Act is the aim of running measures approved by the Cabinet on Wednesday.
The measures will be binding for the Culture Ministry, which is the main supervisory body for most of the legislation's norms. The ministry will keep tabs on the measures when it comes to sanctions ensuing from the act, and also co-operation with professional Slovak-language organisations vis-a-vis negotiations and the approval of a codified version of the state language.
The ministry prepared the measures based on the recommendations of OSCE High Commissioner Knut Vollebaek, while experts from the Commissioner's office co-operated in their creation. Proposals from the representatives of the Round Table of Hungarians in Slovakia organisation were also incorporated in the measures, said Culture Minister Marek Madaric.
Defined in the measures are expressions such as official and public relations, official language, and geographical name. Also explained is the meaning of terms such as the health and social facilities agenda.
As stated in the measures, the use of state, minority and foreign languages in the periodical press, and non-periodical publications published in minority and foreign languages aren't subject to supervision from public-administration bodies. Conversely, non-periodical publications in the state language fall under the supervision of the Culture Ministry,
Patients and also clients of social facilities can communicate with facility personnel in other than state language across the whole of Slovakia if they don't speak the state language. The use of the state language isn't subject to supervision from public administration bodies at these facilities.
All rights reserved. Any publishing or further dissemination of press releases and photographs from TASR's resources without TASR's prior written approval constitutes a violation of the Copyrights Act.
