Problems of ratification of the European Charter of regional or minority languages in Ukraine

Abstract

The article examines the problems of ratification of the European Charter of Regional or Minority Languages of 1992 and changes in the obligations of Ukraine to fulfill its provisions. The authors came to the conclusion that Ukraine's approach to the ratification of the European Charter was not balanced and did not have sufficient scientific justification. In particular, it has the following conceptual flaws. 1. The idea of the rights of national minorities in the sphere of using their languages is taken as abasis, and not the actual protection of regional and minority languages. This fundamental error distorts the essence of the European Charter. 2. The named national minorities were chosen arbitrarily, partly inadequately. The criteria for classify ingcertain languages as regional or minority are unclear. 3. The fundamental mistake wasthe refusal to distinguish the territories of the traditional distribution of the languages that are planned to be protected. Derived from this and obviously unjustified is the special protection of the most numerous group of speakers of the minority language –Russian – within the whole of Ukraine instead of the few historical communities of its speakers. 4. The temporary, and later the final refusal of special protection of non-territorial languages, which lays the grounds for discrimination of such languages as Yiddish and Romani, is unjustified and discriminatory. 5. The biggest drawback is the equal treatment of all regional or minority languages. In such a case, the main beneficiaries of state support become the most widespread languages, and the least number of speakers in relict languages (for example, Karaim) receive very little protection and cannot stop the process of their decline and disappearance. Key words: minority languages, regional languages, language of minority,national minorities, ethno-cultural policy of the state.