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Csaky: Madaric and Lajcak Act Like Comrades in Language Act Issue
Saturday 16 January 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, January 16 (TASR) - Culture Minister Marek Madaric and Foreign Affairs Minister Miroslav Lajcak are behaving like "comrades from the 1980s" when it comes to the issue of the State Language Act amendment, ethnic-Hungarian SMK party chairman Pal Csaky said following a session of SMK's Slovakia-wide council on Saturday.
Moreover, according to Csaky, the two officials are concealing some issues pertaining to the controversial amendment. Lajcak and Madaric have also misinterpreted the statement made by OSCE High Commissioner for National Minorities Knut Vollebaek, said Csaky.
"It's obvious that they're not providing information on the fact that the European Commission has drawn up an evaluation of the running measures to the Language Act, in which it's criticising a variety of issues concerning this document in 12 items," he added.
Csaky also said that he expects an international dialogue on the amendment to continue. On January 18, SMK's delegation will meet representatives of the Council of Europe's advisory Venice Commission and will present them with its own analysis and comparison of the act with the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.
The Venice Commission officials are slated to come to Slovakia to give their legal views on the State Language Act, a recently adopted amendment to which led to protests from the country's Hungarian minority and neighbouring Hungary over perceived new limitations on ethnic-language rights. Invited by the Foreign Affairs Ministry, the Commission experts will discuss the issue with representatives of state authorities, ethnic groups and civil society.
Spokesman for the Slovak Foreign Affairs Ministry Peter Stano said that he won't comment on statements made by representatives of political parties. "The European Commission's document is a working and informal document, and is also outdated now, just like endeavours to question the Language Act and its running measures that have both been given the green light by the only relevant institution tasked with their evaluation, that is, OSCE High Commissioner for National Minorities," he told TASR.
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