Hungarian Alliance: Slovak Language Protected Enough by Current Legislation

Bratislava, October 17 (TASR) - The protection of the Slovak language in the current State Language Act is sufficient, so there's no reason to tighten it, representatives of the ethnic Hungarian Alliance party told a news conference on Thursday in reaction to the latest legislative initiative by the Culture Ministry. "The dominance of the state language is sufficiently, even excessively ensured from the legal viewpoint, so we see no reason to tighten the protection of Slovak," stated Hungarian Alliance leader Laszlo Gubik. According to Gubik, the announced changes in the law, including the tightening of sanctions, may cause the return of tension from the nineties into Slovak-Hungarian co-existence. He understands the effort to defend the national language against the growing influence of Americanisms, however, he thinks that the Culture Ministry should rather motivate and appeal to the observance of literary Slovak. The party also perceives the ministry's statements that the legislation isn't aimed against ethnic-minority languages. "We believe that it's like that and at the same time, we request the ministry to consult the issue with the Government Proxy for Ethnic Minorities Akos Horony," added Gubik. Hungarian Alliance representatives opine that if the language law is to be amended, it should be a modern change that would replace the current two laws - on the state language and on the use of languages ​​of ethnic minorities - with one law. "We need a new law that would talk about the equal status of official languages, meaning it would reflect the use of the ethnic minorities' languages as official languages ​​in municipalities with respective representation of ethnic minorities," explained Hungarian Alliance vice-chair Peter Ory, adding that Slovenia and its Constitution should serve as a model for Slovakia. The intention to amend the language act was last week also criticised by representatives of the opposition Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party, as well as extra-parliamentary Hungarian Forum party chair Zsolt Simon. They stated that the draft is directed against the ethnic Hungarian minority and that they are concerned about the introduction of fines for private individuals. Meanwhile, the Culture Ministry claims that the prepared amendment to the State Language Act is no way directed against ethnic minorities and it won't limit the use of the ethnic minorities' languages. ko/mcs