Three organizations defending the interests of Romanian citizens in Ukraine have submitted a memorandum to the authorities in Bucharest, urging urgent intervention with the leadership in Kyiv to amend draft law no. 16.119 regarding the educational rights of national minorities.

The memorandum was sent to Nicusor Dan; the interim Minister of Foreign Affairs, Oana Toiu; the chairs of the Committees for Romanians Abroad in both Houses of Parliament, Cristina Dumitrescu and Mircea Rosca; as well as the chairs of the Foreign Affairs Committees in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, Titus Corlatean and Hajdu Gabor.

The 'Dacia' Regional Union of Romanians in Transcarpathia, the 'Eudoxiu Hurmuzachi' Romanian Cultural Center in Chernivtsi, and the 'Bessarabia' National-Cultural Association of Romanians in the Odesa region warn that a draft law registered with the Rada in Kyiv could severely impact Romanian-language education within Romanian communities in Ukraine.

'Several members of the Romanian community in Ukraine have analyzed the initial draft, as well as the version registered with the Verkhovna Rada.' We have concluded that, although the draft includes some potentially useful provisions, there remain a number of issues of great importance for the preservation of schools and education in the Romanian language which, in their current form, must be rectified. We are concerned with ensuring that the right to education in the mother tongue can be effectively exercised and that Ukrainian legislation provides our community with the necessary guarantees to preserve its schools, language, and identity, in full compliance with the obligations undertaken by Ukraine,' the memorandum states.

The initiators of the move emphasize that the right to education in the mother tongue is guaranteed by the Constitution of Ukraine.

'Article 53, paragraph (4), enshrines the right of persons belonging to national minorities to education in their mother tongue, while Article 22, paragraph (3), prohibits restricting the content and scope of existing rights and freedoms through the adoption of new laws or the amendment of those currently in force. Similarly, the 1997 Basic Political Treaty between Romania and Ukraine reaffirms the right of persons belonging to the Romanian minority to receive instruction in their mother tongue in a sufficient number of state schools and educational institutions, taking into account the geographical distribution of the minority.' 'For us, these provisions mean that the right to education in the Romanian language cannot be reduced to the mere existence of specific classes or the study of Romanian as a subject; rather, it must be ensured through a network of schools and institutions where such education can be fully implemented,' the memorandum states.

The appeal to the Romanian authorities comes at a time when the Verkhovna Rada's Committee on Education, Science, and Innovation has already examined the draft law (on October 6) and unanimously recommended that the Ukrainian Parliament adopt it in both the first reading and its entirety.

Against this backdrop, the three associations urge the Romanian authorities to urgently intervene with Ukrainian officials to:
* preserve and guarantee the traditional network of Romanian-language schools, as a natural way of exercising the right to education in one's mother tongue, by reverting to the legislative solutions that existed prior to 2017, in line with the Venice Commission's opinions on Ukraine's education legislation;
* guarantee the right of Romanian children to receive education in the Romanian language through the completion of secondary and vocational schooling, just as indigenous peoples do;
* eliminate wording that allows Romanian to be used in education only 'alongside' [another language]. ...the state language, without clearly specifying which is the primary language of instruction. 'We demand that, in Romanian schools, Romanian remain the primary language of instruction, and that the same subject not be taught in parallel in both Ukrainian and Romanian,' state the signatories of the memorandum.
* abandoning the mechanism whereby the expansion of instruction in the state language can be decided upon at the request of a two-thirds majority of parents, a mechanism that could place minority schools in a position where they gradually lose their Romanian character;
* establishing an exception for classes taught in a minority language regarding the general minimum threshold of five students, so that a small number of children in a locality does not, in itself, become grounds for closing the class and losing the right to education in the mother tongue.

Furthermore, they call for the establishment of exceptions for national minority schools regarding general requirements for academic high schools; the guarantee of the continuity of the existing network of Romanian-language educational institutions and the consideration, during any reorganization, of the need to preserve this network; the granting and retention of national minority educational institution status based on criteria that do not lead to the gradual disappearance of Romanian schools; ensuring that principals, management members, and administrative staff of educational institutions providing education in a national minority language know and can use that minority's language, so that the right to education in Romanian does not stop at the classroom door; and the adoption of appropriate measures to revitalize Romanian-language education in localities where it is in decline, rather than using demographic challenges as a pretext for closing even more schools. AGERPRES(RO - writing by: Cristian Lupascu; EN - writing by: Bogdan Gabaroi)

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