EDITORIAL

The heterogeneity of the contents included in the present Bulletin of Mercator-Legislation mirrors the complexity of situations that language planning entails not only in current EU member states but also, and in particular, in nearly all states which will sooner or later play an active role in the construction of this new Europe. This wide range of situations has also been covered in our publication’s preceding issues.

Within the framework of the reforms in domestic legislation in order to accomodate it to the EU-requirements to candidate states regarding the protection of linguistic minorities, the Turkish parliament adopted a few months ago a package of significant amendments in this regard. Among these, one should underline the lifting of the bans on the use of languages other than Turkish in the fields of education and radio and television broadcasting. Despite the fact that such measures have been welcomed by international spheres, it is yet not yet clear to what extent they will be implemented in the future. In the present Bulletin we publish the first regulations that have been adopted.

In a rather different area, we also present a recent constitutional amendment introduced by the Portuguese government in December 2001, according to which the Portuguese language becomes the de jure official language of the Republic. One should remember that ever since the recognition by the Portuguese parliament of the official status of the Mirandese language within its territorial scope, this was the only strictly official language in the state. Paradoxically, the Portuguese language did not enjoy the same explicit recognition

In the Bulletin’s section devoted to the international framework, this time we reproduce a judgement by the European Court of Human Rights on the Podkolzina affair, a Russian-speaking Latvian who was denied, in 1998, the right to stand as a candidate in an electoral list due to, according to the authorities in the field, the fact that she did not prove to have the required knowledge of the state language, that is, Latvian. The judgement, issued in April 2002, held that the Latvian state had violated Article 3 of Protocol nº 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights (right to free elections), a fact that clearly shows that the resolution of this kind of conflicts in Latvia is far from being simple.

Finally, the Dossier No. 11 included in this Bulletin is meant to be an introduction to the current system of protection towards language minorities in the Czech and Slovak Republics. It provides a brief overview on the recent history prior to their respective sovereignty processes in 1991, on their respective linguistic and demographic structures in the present, and on how the European Commission evaluates these two countries’ language-related legislation and its implementation.