The Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers has published sets of recommendations on the protection and promotion of minority languages in Armenia, Croatia, Montenegro and Sweden. The recommendations are based on the respective country evaluation reports by the Committee of Experts under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.
Armenia should favour the provision of at least a substantial part of pre-school education in Assyrian, Greek, Kurdish and Yezidi and introduce the broadcasting of a public TV programme in these languages; it should also improve teaching at primary and secondary levels in all the minority languages, take steps to ensure that their speakers can use them in contacts with administrative and judicial authorities, promote the use/adoption of place names in the minority languages in the municipalities concerned, as well as provide adequate funding for cultural activities and to the national minority associations. The Committee of Ministers has proposed these as priority recommendations to the country’s authorities.
Priority recommendations given to the authorities of Montenegro include developing a coherent strategy for the protection and promotion of Romani, introducing this language in education and providing teacher training and teaching material in Romani, taking all the necessary measures to ensure its use in practice by judicial and administrative authorities in the areas where the Romani speakers are present in sufficient numbers. Besides, the authorities should make sure that the mechanism for providing sustainable state funding to all minority language projects is adequate.
The authorities of Sweden should take measures to include language as a ground for discrimination in the Discrimination Act and strengthen education of or in all minority languages by adopting a comprehensive and structured approach based on the needs of the speakers and according to the situation of each of the minority languages, the Committee of Ministers recommended.
The authorities of Croatia should continue promoting awareness and tolerance vis-à-vis the minority languages and the cultures they represent as an integral part of the cultural heritage of the country, both in the general curriculum at all stages of education and in the media, ensure the use of minority languages with the authorities, review the existing threshold and introduce equal and official use of minority languages in those areas where there is a sufficient number of speakers, as well as increase the broadcasting duration and the regularity of television programmes in each minority language.
