The Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers has today adopted recommendations to the Netherlands and to Slovenia, based on the evaluation reports by the Committee of Experts of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.
In the Netherlands, the Charter applies to Frisian, Limburgish, Low Saxon, Romanes and Yiddish, but the only language for which central government and provincial authorities have a joint responsibility is Frisian. Priority recommendations for the Netherlands include strengthening the teaching of and in Frisian at all levels of education, adopting structured policies for Romanes and Yiddish and further developing Limburgish and Low Saxon as regular school subjects.
In Slovenia, the Charter applies to Hungarian and Italian which benefit from a high level of legal protection as co-official languages in certain areas, as well as to Croatian, German, Romani and Serbian. One of the priority recommendations to the Slovenian authorities is to recognise Croatian, German and Serbian which are traditionally spoken in Slovenia as minority languages, in order to boost their protection under the Charter. Furthermore, the teaching of the Romani language and culture should be further developed, sufficient resources ensured for the provision of television programmes in Hungarian and Italian, and measures to raise public awareness of the regional and minority languages in education and media intensified.
The Committee of Ministers has also adopted a report evaluating the implementation by the Czech Republic of the recommendations for immediate action given to the authorities by the Charter's Committee of Experts in 2019.
Text of the Charter
