Region: OSCE weighs in again on language law

By Robert Hodgson

For the Budapest Times

The OSCE's (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) high commissioner on national minorities, Knut Vollebaek, visited Bratislava and Budapest in early February as part of a continued effort to limit the damage to relations between Slovakia and Hungary over the former's law limiting the use of minority languages in public life.

After discussions in the Slovak capital Feb. 8 to review whether the law is being implemented in line with OSCE recommendations, Vollebaek came to Budapest and spoke with Foreign Affairs Minister Péter Balázs and Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai. Vollebaek's position is that amendments to the Slovak State Language Act that came into force last year - and were implemented in January - are in line with international norms. He criticized the legislation, however, for clumsy wording that led to ambiguities and doubts over how to apply it.

Balázs, however, maintained that the new law has "upset the balance" between Slovaks and the ethnic Hungarian minority in Slovakia. He called on Slovakia to formulate comprehensive laws on minority rights. "If these come about, only then can we speak about legal and political equality," Balazs said.

Slovakia says its legislation, which allows for fines in some cases if a minority language - Hungarian is the only significant example in Slovakia - is used to conduct public matters. Critics among the 500,000 ethnic Hungarians in Slovakia say the wording of the law means penalties could be imposed for carving a Hungarian epitaph on a headstone without a prominent Slovak translation or for issuing announcements only in Hungarian at a Hungarian folk festival.

More than two million Hungarian speakers live outside Hungary's borders. The status of Hungarian minorities in Slovakia, and in other neighboring countries, is an emotive one that has been used by politicians on both sides of the border since 1921, when post-World War I borders were devised. Both Hungary and Slovakia are holding general elections in the coming months, and the issue looks set to be used as a political football on both sides of the border.

Bajnai's Socialist government established a fund in January to pay the legal costs and any fines levied against Hungarian speakers who fall afoul of the Slovak legislation. Slovak Foreign Affairs Minister Miroslav Lajčák called on Hungary Feb. 8 to stop spreading "falsehoods" about his country's laws on language use. The case has given Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico plenty of opportunity to take a strong nationalist stance.

Bratislava insists its legislation aims only to protect the Slovak language. Such laws are by no means unique in Europe. In France, in 2006, the U.S. firm GE Healthcare was fined a whopping 580,000 euros for failing to issue workers with French translations of documents and for supplying them with English-language software. The Slovak government has said it is this kind of corporate misuse (or lack of use) of Slovak that the new legislation aims to curb.

In a compromise signed by Fico and Bajnai last year - largely brokered by Vollebaek -Slovakia agreed to observe a set of principles on the implementation of its new legislation. The 63-year-old Norwegian diplomat Vollebaek said in January that he will follow the issue "until the balance between strengthening the state language and protecting minority rights is achieved."

Tensions ran so high last year as the spat over the newly drafted language law escalated that Hungary's president, László Sólyom, was turned back at the Slovak border in August 2009 en route to the unveiling of a statue. Such a snub was unprecedented between two members of the Schengen zone, which theoretically guarantee free passage for all citizens.

Robert Hodgson can be reached at news@praguepost.com