Language Research

Primarily, the Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia, adopted on December 23, 1991, effective on December 23, 1991, is designed in positive spirit towards the all-ethnic communities (Articles 5, 11, 61, 62 dealing with use of language and protection of minorities).

Special interest is expressed towards Italian and Hungarian communities (Article 5, 64) and the Roma community (Article 65).

The protection of minorities is largely tied to the term “ethnically mixed area” (EMA), which comprises the territory of the settlements in the individual municipality where members of the native Italian and Hungarian ethnic communities live.

The Statute of the Municipality Izola (official Bulletin, 8/1995), Article12, §4 on using Italian outside the bilingual area)

BILINGUAL SIGNS

In any ethnically mixed area, the provisions on visible bilingualism are practiced without any minority population limit. Stipulations on visible bilingualism can be found in the National Legislation (Regulations on Determining the Names of Settlements and Streets and the Marking of Settlements, Streets and Buildings (Official Gazette of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia, No. 11/80)) as well as in the municipal regulations (Status of the Municipalities). Furthermore, members of ethnic communities actively participate in the process of bilingual naming of settlements and streets (Law on the Naming and Registering of Settlements, Streets and Buildings (Official Gazette of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia, No. 8/80))

USE OF ETHNIC MINORITIES IN STATE ADMINISTRATION

The Law on personal names (Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, No. 2/87) allows the use of personal names and surnames in their original form.

The Law on Administration (Official Gazette of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia, No. 64/94) allows the use of Hungarian and Italian along with Slovenian in Government administration.

The Law on Employees in State bodies (Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, No. 15/90) stipulates that at higher levels of administration an active knowledge of Slovenian and either Hungarian or Italian is a condition for taking up employment and that knowledge of the language of ethnic communities entitles one to additional financial remuneration.

In accordance with the Standing Orders of the National Assembly the two deputies of the ethnic minorities have the right use their language in oral and written form. These deputies' debates shall be translated to Slovenian.

BILINGUAL DOCUMENTS

Law on the Register of Births, Deaths and Marriages

Law on Personal Identification Cards

Law on Passports for Citizens of the Republic of Slovenia

In addition to personal identity cards and passports (which are trilingual; in Slovenian, English, and in Italian or Hungarian) the following documents are bilingual: driving licenses, vehicle registration documents, medical insurance booklets and army service booklets.

BILINGUAL OPERATION IN THE JUDICIARY

Law on Courts (Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, No. 19/94)

Law on Notaries (Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, No. 13/94, 48/94)

Law on the Office of Public Prosecutor (Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, No. 63/94)

According to the Rules of Court (Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, No. 17/95) the court proceedings must be conducted bilingually if one of the parties uses the Hungarian or Italian language. Qualification for conducting bilingual proceedings is remunerated with a special bonus.

BILINGUAL TRANSACTIONS IN MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION

Law on the Financing of Municipalities (Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, No. 80/94, 56/98) stipulates and guarantees funds from the state budget to finance the requirements of bilingualism and to implement the constitutional rights of the Italian and Hungarian communities.

EDUCATION

Law on Kindergartens (Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, No. 12/96)

Law on Primary Schools (Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, No. 12/96)

Law on Grammar Schools (Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, No. 12/96)

Law on Vocational and Professional Training (Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, No. 12/96)

Law on the Implementation of Special Rights of Members of the Italian and Hungarian Ethnic Minorities in the Field of Education (Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, No. 12/82)

For schools and kindergartens in EMA conducted in the Slovenian language, Italian or Hungarian shall be a compulsory subject. The same holds for any educational institution conducted in the language of a minority.

MASS MEDIA

Law on Mass Media (Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, No. 18/94)

Allows the creation and dissemination of information about minorities in their own languages. This includes the presentation of ethnic community issues in the majority language media, the free reception of information from the home country of the minority and the free transmission of information to that country.

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ROMA

Slovenia has ratified the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities in 1998. However, it recognized only the Italian and Hungarian minority, which could enjoy the rights set forth in the Convention, and all other minorities living in Slovenia were excluded.

Though guaranteed that “in accordance with the Constitution and internal legislation of the Republic of Slovenia, the provisions of the Framework Convention shall apply also to the members of the Roma community,” the Slovene State Report explains that due to the specific situation of the Romany community the same criteria of minority protection as are applied to the other two autochthonous ethnic communities cannot be applied to the Romany community.

The 1991 Constitution also reflects this legal differentiation between the Hungarian and Italian minorities and all other minorities living in Slovenia, including the Roma.

Special rights guaranteed to Italians and Hungarians without regard for the numerical strength of these communities, include, inter alia:

• Recognition of Italian and Hungarian as official languages in those areas where Italian or Hungarian communities reside (Article 11)
• The right to use national symbols, establish organizations, foster economic, cultural, scientific and research activities, as well as activities associated with the mass media and publishing (Article 64)
• The right to education in the minority language and/or bilingual education (as determined by statute) as well as the right to plan their own curricula (in areas determined by the state), with financial support and encouragement from the state (Article 64)
• The right to direct representation at the local level and in the National Assembly (Article 64)
• Veto power with regard to “statutes, regulations and other legislative enactments which exclusively affect the exercise of specific rights enjoyed by the Italian or Hungarian ethnic Communities under this Constitution, or affecting the status of these communities” (Article 64)

The rights of the Roma minority are also addressed in the Constitution, which stipulates that “the status and special rights of the Romany community living in Slovenia shall be such as are determined by statute” (Article 65). However, no such statute has been formulated in the period since the Constitution was adopted in 1991.

In practice, there is little opportunity to use Romani languages in dealings with state bodies, although the language is widely spoken among Slovenian Roma. The Constitution further provides that “any person deprived of his liberty must be immediately informed in his mother tongue, or in a language which he/she understands, of the reasons for his/her arrest” (Article 19). In the case of Roma, Slovenian is the language they are presumed to understand.

Concerning education, an elaborate legal and institutional framework allows for schools with Italian as the first language of instructions in Italian-speaking areas, and bilingual Hungarian-Slovene schools in Hungarian-speaking areas. Both models apply in areas where these groups live in significant numbers. By contrast, there is no legal provision for Romani language education. It is claimed that the lack of a standard written form and the use of different dialects in Slovenia pose an obstacle to the adoption of legal regulations.

Nevertheless, there are initiatives by the Alliance of Roma of Slovenia to provide the Romani language lessons in schools in every region where Roma live. In Prekmurje, Saturday lectures were organized in Romani languages.

Existing provisions for the teaching of minority culture and history to the Hungarian and Italian minorities are not available to Roma or other ethnic minorities. In fact, Roma appear sporadically in Slovene textbooks when one analysis found only three mentions of Roma in all books used in Slovene classes.

The same applies to the media. In the absence of legislation, the Governmental Office for Nationalities and the Ministry for Culture supports a Slovene-Romani newspaper (“Romano Them”) and a weekly hour-long Romani language show, “Romani 60,” on the local station in Murska Sobota (East Slovenia).

Source: http://www.eumap.org/reports/content/10/705/minority_slovenia.pdf The EU Accession Monitoring Program Report on Minority Protection, Open Society Institute 2001 on

http://www.eumap.org/reports/content/10

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Updated (April 2003)

“NO” TO BILINGUALISM ON REQUEST

According to the law proposed by the Slovenian government at the beginning of March, the registers of birth, marriage and death in the Hungarian and Italian speaking areas should be issued bilingually only when people ask for it. However, the legislation currently in force states that all people living in the bilingual areas (the Adriatic coast near the Italian border and Hungarian speakers of Prekmurje) receive bilingual certificates. In addition, Article 11 of the Slovene Constitution guarantees that Italian and Hungarian are also locally co-official languages.

After the negotiations with minority representatives this danger of bilingual forms being only available on request has been avoided when both minority amendments have been approved in order to preserve the current legal status. It means that the principle of an active offer maintains.

Source: Eurolang News, Turin, March 17, 2003, by Marco Stolfo, http://217.136.252.147/webpub/eurolang/pajenn.asp?ID=4144

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Updated (October 2003)

BROADCASTING

In Slovenia broadcasting for the Italian (0.16 percent) and Hungarian (0.43 percent of total population) ethnic minority is based on Article 64 of the Constitution.

Concretizing the constitutional provision, Article 52 of the Slovenian Law on the Mass Media states explicitly that:

In the broadcasting licensing process, priority must be accorded to an applicant radio or television station in which the majority of programs are of its own production in the Slovene language, or in Italian or Hungarian, in the areas populated by the Italian and Hungarian national minorities.

Source: Media Legislation, Minority Issues and Implications for Latvia by Leonid Raihman, January 20, 2003, http://www.policy.hu/raihman/PolicyPaper.htm

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Updated (May 2004)

Although the Slovene language is the official language of the state, some constitutional and legislative provisions guarantee also to Hungarian and Italian an equal status for administrative, judicial and other purposes in certain parts of the country¹.

Concerning broadcasting legislation, apart from affirming the right of minorities to access information, and programs and advertising in their languages, it also equates linguistic competence in Hungarian or Italian with that in Slovene, where appropriate. Thus those individuals aspiring after editor positions in the Hungarian or Italian linguistic areas are not obliged to be proficient in Slovene.

THE 2002 PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION ACT

Article 4

The official language in administration shall be Slovene.

In municipal areas with original Italian and Hungarian ethnic communities the second official language shall be Italian and Hungarian, respectively. In these areas the administration shall carry out operations, conduct proceedings and issue legal and other acts in Slovene or in the language of the ethnic community, if the party residing in such an area should speak Italian or Hungarian, as the case may be.

THE 2001 MASS MEDIA ACT (entered into force on April 25, 2001)

According to the Slovene broadcasting legislation, members of the recognized minorities enjoy the same status as the Slovenes; however, with some preferential exceptions, which are designed to give those minorities more space.

Article 5

(1) Publishers founded and registered in the Republic of Slovenia must disseminate programming in Slovene, or must translate programming into Slovene in an appropriate manner, unless such is primarily intended for readers, listeners or viewers from any other language group.

(2) Publishers may disseminate programming intended for language education in a foreign language.

(3) The reason for disseminating programming in a foreign language or the purpose thereof must be separately elaborated in a discernible position within/on the programming medium using clear graphic, visual or acoustic symbols in Slovene.

(4) If programming is intended for the Hungarian or Italian ethnic communities, publishers may disseminate the programming in the language of the ethnic community.

(5) If, for reasons of the immediacy, directness, and authenticity of informing the public, or because of unavoidable time or technical obstacles or other unforeseen obstacles, programming is exceptionally disseminated in a foreign language, the provision of the third paragraph of this article shall apply.

(6) The sense of the provision of the first paragraph of this article shall also apply to media carrying information specified in the third paragraph of Article 2 of the present act.

Article 51

(1) It shall be obligatory to disseminate advertisements in Slovene or in a Slovene translation, unless disseminated in a foreign language in accordance with the present act.

(2) Mass media for the Hungarian and Italian ethnic communities may publish advertisements in the language of the ethnic community.

Article 86. Proportion of Slovenian music on radio stations

(1) At least 10 percent of the daily transmission time of any radio station must be Slovenian music.

(2) No more than 20 percent of the daily transmission time during which Slovenian music is presented may count towards the proportion specified in the third paragraph of the previous article.

(3) The provisions of this article shall not apply to radio stations for the Hungarian and Italian ethnic communities.

Source: Minority-language Related Broadcasting and Legislation in the OSCE, Program in Comparative Media Law and Policy (PCMLP), Center for Socio-Legal Studies, Wolfson College, Oxford University & Institute for Information Law (IViR) (http://www.ivir.nl/index-english.html), Universiteit van Amsterdam (Study commissioned by the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities), April 2003, edited by T. McGonagle (IViR), B. Davis Noll & M. Price (PCMLP), http://www.ivir.nl/publications/mcgonagle/Minority-language%20broadcasting.pdf

¹ The Italian ethnic community lives in relatively dense groups in the ethnically mixed territory of Slovene Istria, in the municipalities of Koper/Capodistria, Izola/Isola and Piran/Pirano.

The region in which the Hungarian autochthonous ethnic community is settled covers a narrow belt along the Slovene-Hungarian border. In administrative terms, they fall under the jurisdiction of five municipalities: Hodos, Moravske Toplice, Salovci, Lendava and Dobrovnik.

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Updated (October 2004)

CONTROVERSY OVER A NEW LAW ON THE PUBLIC USE OF SLOVENIAN

On August 5, 2004 the Slovenian Parliament adopted the Law on the Public Use of the Slovenian Language, aimed to protect the language from a foreign languages' influence. The law entered into force on August 20.

According to this new legislation:

• Slovenian shall be used orally and in writing in public;
• On the basis of the Constitution, those languages recognized as minority languages may also be used in bilingual city councils (Italian, on the coast and Hungarian in the north-east of the country);
• The names of all state bodies, local administrations, public organizations, public companies, and political parties shall be in Slovenian;
• The same goes for private companies, premises and shops, which may enter their names into the business register (and therefore be authorized to operate) only if their names are 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;
• Only people with appropriate knowledge of Slovenian can be employed in jobs requiring communication skills;
• All legal persons under private law and all natural persons must communicate with their customers in Slovenian;
• Contracts with Slovenian companies must be written only in Slovenian and only this version may be considered as an original.

This law has been criticized by members of the extreme right-wing Austrian party, FPÖ (Freedom Party) for restraining free competition by means of language discrimination. Representatives of the Italian and Hungarian minority have also criticized the law, as it supposedly does not promote diversity.

Source: Mercator News, October 2004, http://www.ciemen.org/mercator/index-gb.htm

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Updated (January 2005)

THE LAW ON THE PUBLIC USE OF THE SLOVENIAN LANGUAGE

On August 5, 2004 the Slovenian Parliament adopted the Law on the Public Use of the Slovenian Language, aiming to protect the official language from foreign languages' influence.

The law regulates spoken or written use of Slovenian in the public sphere. The two constitutionally recognized minority languages (Italian and Hungarian) may also be used in bilingual city councils.

It stipulates that public insignia as well as the names of private companies, premises and shops should be in the Slovenian language. All proceedings made by public and private legal persons should be carried out in the official language. Slovenian is also a language of public notices, conferences, press releases, announcements, and product labeling and instructions.

The Law entered into force on August 20, 2004.

Source: Selection of recently added documents in MIRIS (Newsletter 7 — November 2004) — www.eurac.edu/miris

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Updated (May 2006)

SLOVENIA ADOPTS LEGISLATION FOR SLOVENES ABROAD

On 5 May 2006, a new legislation entered into force after being approved by the Slovene Parliament a month ago. This legislative provision empowers the Government of the Republic of Slovenia to pay more attention and give greater support to Slovenian minorities living in the neighboring countries such as Austria, Croatia, Hungary and Italy as well as to emigrants dispersed all over Europe, North and South America, Australia and New Zealand.

The new legislation contains many provisions, mostly referring to culture and education. The existing Parliamentary Committee for Slovenes abroad has been also included in the law and in the government. Furthermore, a Minister for Slovenes abroad and a completely new body, entitled the Council for Slovenes abroad led by the prime minister, will be appointed from 2008. It will meet twice a year to discuss all relevant problems.

Concerning the composition of the new body, the law stipulates that the prime minister will appoint council members. This fact has raised discussion amongst the representatives of Slovenes in all the four neighboring states, who argue that the council members should be appointed directly by their umbrella organizations. For example, a minority representative from Carinthia, Marjan Pipp, stressed that Slovenia as a state should take into consideration the organizations of Slovenes abroad.

On the other hand, the State Secretary for Slovenes abroad, Zorko Pelikan, expressed his satisfaction with the adopted law which gives a real legal basis for the provisions in favor of Slovenian minorities and in the future it will promote cooperation in economy, culture, science, education and regional activities.

Source: Eurolang News, May 8, 2006 by Bojan Brezigar http://www.eurolang.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2613&Itemid=1&lang=en

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