MERCATOR :: News

November 2004

ACT PROMOTING FRISIAN IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN PASSED BY THE PARLIAMENT OF SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN

November 2004 – The Parliament of Schleswig-Holstein (Germany) passed on 11 November the “Act promoting Frisian in the public domain”, after having been approved by several parliamentary committees since its presentation as a bill in January this year. This new legislation is a milestone in the history of the Frisian minority as well as in the context of Germany’s minority policy, since it increases considerably the rights of Frisians. As explained by Lars Harms, the author of the act, one of the act’s most outstanding advances is that in the Preamble it acknowledges the rights of the Frisian minority as an ethnic group (Volksgruppe) in equal terms as with the rights of the Danish national minority, which is protected on the basis of the Bonn-Copenhagen Declaration. Mr. Harms clarified that it is “not only a language act or an act to promote a specific culture”, but an act protecting a recognised minority. In this sense, Frisians are given the same recognition as the other two minorities present in the border area between Germany and Denmark, the German and the Danish ones. It is the first time in the history of Frisians that their rights are concretely formulated in the form of a law and that a law explicitly recognises the freedom of each individual to Frisian affiliation.

As regards the content of the act, as revised by several parliamentary committees, several relevant details have been added: not only documents, but also application forms, supporting documents and other written sheets, may be submitted to the authorities in Frisian; public announcements may be made bilingually (in German and Frisian); and “the Land of Schleswig-Holstein shall promote that signs in (...) [certain] public buildings as well as place name signs in the district of Nordfriesland and on the island of Helgoland be also posted in bilingual form”. As stated by Lars Harms, such provisions give Frisian the highest status possible, as they place it at the same level as German, the official language.

Moreover, with this new legislation eight additional provisions of Article 10 of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (RML) will be satisfied as regards the Frisian language. As for now, concerning this article (entitled “Administrative authorities and public services”), in Schleswig-Holstein Germany has only undertaken to implement for the Frisian language paragraphs 1.a.v, 4.c, and 5: “to ensure that users of RML may validly submit a document in these languages”, “compliance (...) with requests from public service employees having a knowledge of a RML to be appointed in the territory in which that language is used” and “to allow the use or adoption of family names in the RML”.

For more information about the law, see Mercator-Legislation’s News: January 2004, and www.eurolang.net.