October 2004

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SLOVENIA ADOPTS A POLEMICAL LAW ON THE PUBLIC USE OF SLOVENIAN (Lenghe.net)

October 2004 – The Slovenian Parliament adopted on 5 August 2004 a Law on the Public Use of the Slovenian Language, aiming to protect the language in front of foreign languages, and it entered into force on 20 August. The text of the law has only been published in Slovenian, but it will soon be also available in English.

As reported by Lenghe.net, this new legislation establishes the following provisions: Slovenian shall be the language to be used in oral and written form in public life situations; on the basis of the Constitution, those languages recognised as minority languages may also be used in bilingual city councils, i.e. Italian, on the coast, and Hungarian, in the north-east of the country; the name of all state bodies, local administrations, public organisations, public companies, and political parties shall be in Slovenian; the same goes for private companies, premises and shops, which may enter their names in the business register (and therefore be authorised to operate) only if their name is in Slovenian; all proceedings made by public and private legal persons shall be carried out in Slovenian; and public notices, conferences and press releases, announcements of public statements, and product labelling and instructions are to be in Slovenian.

Other provisions of the law establish (as stated by MEP Andreas Mölzer in a written question to the European Commission at the end of September) that contracts with Slovenian firms must be written only in Slovenian and only this version may be considered as the original, the managing boards of bodies, services and publicly authorised entities are responsible for ensuring that only people with appropriate knowledge of Slovenian are employed in jobs involving communication with customers, and all legal persons under private law and all natural persons must communicate with their customers in Slovenian.

This law has raised some controversy, as members of the extreme right-wing Austrian party, FPÖ (Freedom Party), have criticised it. MEP Andreas Mölzer, for instance, considers that it restrains free competition “by means of language discrimination”. In response, the spokesman of the European Commissioner for Internal Market has stated that this law is too severe and that the Commission is going to study whether it is compatible with community rules. Members of the Italian and Hungarian minorities in Slovenia have also criticised the law as it supposedly promotes a feeling against diversity.