The Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers has adopted recommendations to the Netherlands and to Slovenia, based on the evaluation reports by the Committee of Experts under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML).
In the Netherlands, the Charter applies to Frisian, Limburgish, Low Saxon, Romanes and Yiddish, but the only language for which central government and provincial authorities have a joint responsibility is Frisian. Priority recommendations for the Netherlands include strengthening the teaching of and in Frisian in all levels of education, adopting structured policies for Romanes and Yiddish and further developing Limburgish and Low Saxon as regular school subjects. (See the recommendations and the evaluation report on the Netherlands).
In Slovenia, the Charter applies to Hungarian and Italian which benefit from a high level of legal protection as co-official languages in the certain areas, as well as to Croatian, German, Romani and Serbian. One of the priority recommendations to the authorities of Slovenia is to recognise Croatian, German and Serbian traditionally spoken in Slovenia as minority languages, in order to boost their protection under the European Charter. In addition, the teaching of the Romani language and culture should be further developed, sufficient resources ensured for the provision of television programmes in Hungarian and Italian, and measures intensified to raise public awareness of the regional and minority languages in education and media. (See the recommendations and the evaluation report on Slovenia).
The Committee of Ministers also adopted a report evaluating the implementation by the Czech Republic of the recommendations for immediate action given to the authorities by the ECRML Committee of Experts in 2019.
