Reactions to Ukraine’s new education law

Romanian authorities to look for ways to reduce negative impact of Ukraines new education law on the ethnic Romanians in this country.

Roxana Vasile, 27.09.2017, 13:29

The Romanian
authorities have strongly reacted after the Ukrainian President Petro
Poroshenko signed the new education bill into law on Monday. Bucharest has
voiced its regret that in spite of repeated calls on the Ukrainian authorities
to reconsider, President Poroshenko eventually promulgated this controversial
law that significantly restricts tuition in minority languages, the Romanian
language included.

The Romanian Foreign
Ministry has announced it will continue efforts to make international
institutions aware of the negative effects of this law. Actions at bilateral
level will also continue so that ethnic Romanians in Ukraine can further study
in their mother tongue. Foreign Minister Teodor Melescanu said this in an exclusive
interview to Radio Romania:

What is important for us is to make sure that ethnic
Romanians in Ukraine can continue their studies at high standards in their
mother tongue. Therefore, we have scheduled a meeting between the Romanian and
Ukrainian education ministers who will hold concrete talks on the curricula and
the particular subject matters that need to be studied in Romanian or in
Ukrainian.

In the meantime, the Ministry for the Relation with
the Romanians Abroad and the Education Ministry are working on a bill that
should help Romanian ethnics in Ukraine learn their mother tongue. The Minister
for the Relation with the Romanians Abroad, Andreea Pastarnac, has given us
details:

The Ministry for the Romanians Abroad together with
the Education Ministry are drafting a bill that should allow us to grant an
education package to the ethnic Romanian pupils and students in Ukraine so that
they can further choose to study in Romanian until the new education law takes
effect. Also, we will try to discuss with the Ukrainian side ways of obtaining
a special status for the Romanian ethnics in Ukraine, so that the current
formula of tuition in Romanian can be preserved.

Romania’s Parliament is also taking steps towards
finding a solution to this problem. A delegation of deputies and senators will
soon travel to Kiev to initiate political dialogue with the relevant Ukrainian
authorities, in an attempt to resolve this matter in keeping with the European
norms. A group of Romanian MPs have already met the Ukrainian Ambassador to
Romania, Oleksandr Bankov, who has given assurances that no school with tuition
in minority languages will be closed down or its teachers dismissed. The
Ukrainian official has mentioned, on this occasion, Romania’s constant support for
his country’s EU accession.