March 2006

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BILINGUAL SIGN CONTROVERSY IN CARINTHIA

March 2006 - Carinthia, an Austrian state with an important Slovenian minority, has been suffering for the past months a bilingual sign controversy, caused by the lack of bilingual signs (German-Slovenian). According to the law they should be put in places where the Slovenian minority reaches 25 % of the population. A sentence by the Austrian Constitutional Court on this matter giving the Carinthian government until next June to erect bilingual signs in Bleiburg/Pliberk and recommending to reduce the threshold to 10% of the population has provoked the opposition of Governor Jorg Haider.

This controversy is not new. In 1955 the Austrian State Treaty came into force, declaring in its article 7 that the Slovenian minority had the right to have bilingual signs in southern Carinthia. This produced a bilingual sign law in 1972, which established that approximately 200 bilingual signs had to be erected. However, the German majority of Carinthia disagreed and this led to which has been known as the “bilingual sign storm” (“Ortstafelsturm”), with violent removal of the bilingual signs and the resignation of the then Governor Hans Sima.

Because of this, a Minority law was enacted in 1976, which declared in its article 2.2 that bilingual signs had to be put up only where 25% of the total population belonged to a minority. In Carinthia, it meant that 91 bilingual signs were needed, but until today only 77 signs have been put up. Since then, it seemed that the situation had been calm, but a sentence by the Austrian Constitutional Court has brought the controversy into the spotlight again. The lawyer Rudolf Vouk was given a traffic fine as he drove knowingly too fast through a Carinthian city (St. Kanzian) which didn’t have bilingual signs. The case arrived to the Constitutional Court because Vouk claimed that the lack of bilingual signs in St. Kanzian was anticonstitutional. The Court ruled then that the 25% established in the Minority law was too high and reduced it to 10%, thus increasing the number of bilingual signs needed.

This has created a strong opposition by Governor Haider and its party BZÖ (“Bündnis Zukunft Österreich”). Haider has criticised Constitutional Court members for their decision numerous times, and has tried to split the population with a census and now with an opinion poll.