Reforming the legislation on national minorities of Ukraine in the context of europezation of the legal system of Ukraine (theoretical and legal aspect)

Abstract

The article reveals the peculiarities of the optimization of national legislation, which regulates the legal status of national minorities in Ukraine. In the aspect of intensifying the processes of European integration of Ukraine, as a candidate state for joining the European Union, the low rates of improvement of the legislation on national minorities are analyzed, attention is focused on many of its imperfections, the presence of which does not correspond to the best European practices. In particular, based on the conclusions of the experts of the Venice Commission, attention is focused on the fact that the norms of the current law of Ukraine on national minorities do not provide conditions for the full implementation of linguistic identity by national minorities, since the regulation of this is not clear (norms on the protection of the linguistic identity of national minorities are contained in other legislative texts and are indirectly aimed at normalizing issues of language use only in certain fields - education, judiciary, mass media, etc.).
 A classification of the directions of Europeanization of the legislative framework on issues of ensuring the full rights of national minorities is proposed: requirements of a formal and legal nature and requirements of an institutional nature are distinguished. The requirements of a formal and legal nature are reduced to the improvement of the mechanism of protection against discrimination of national minorities in the process of realizing the right to use the native language. The requirements of an institutional nature provide for the establishment of a separate authority in Ukraine, which will specialize in ensuring the implementation of legislation in the field of national minorities.
 It was concluded that updating the national legislation of Ukraine on national minorities is currently an important step of our country on the long and difficult path of European integration. Accordingly, the long-term task of legal science is to develop scientifically based proposals for the development of a new law on national minorities, which in the near future will provide the maximum conditions for the full implementation of each representative of national minorities of their rights and interests.