New law on national minorities adopted in Ukraine, a change for Hungarian minority there

The Ukrainian parliament adopted a new law on national minorities on Tuesday, thus repealing the previous one, Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported based on information from MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak.

The Hungarian state news agency, MTI pointed out that the bill on national minorities (communities) was supported by 324 MPs, and that at least 226 votes were needed for its adoption. The adoption of the law is one of the conditions for Ukraine to start negotiations on its accession to the European Union.

The bill sets out the definition of national minorities (communities), the rights and obligations of persons belonging to national minorities, the rights of their representatives and the specific features of state policy for the enforcement of the same, as well as the powers of the central executive body in the field of the protection of persons belonging to national minorities.

The fifth article of the law guarantees the social, economic, cultural and linguistic rights and freedoms set out in the Constitution, to all citizens of Ukraine, regardless of their ethnic origin, or whether or not they belong to national minorities. Under the law, a person belonging to a national minority has the right to self-identity, freedom of association and peaceful assembly, freedom of opinion, belief, thought, speech, conscience and religion, and to participate in political, economic and social life. They are also guaranteed the right to use their national language and to preserve the cultural identity of the community.

The Hungarian government and the organisations of the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia – which have objected to the language article of the 2018 education law and the 2019 law on the functioning of Ukrainian as the state language, known as "the language law", because they saw them as a violation of the rights of minorities – have been urging Kyiv for years to adopt legislation ensuring the protection of minorities in Ukraine.

It is because of the now repealed law that the Hungarian government has so far blocked Ukraine's advance towards NATO and the EU. The law has curtailed the rights of the approximately 150 thousand-strong Hungarian minority living in Ukraine's Transcarpathian region.

This was also one of the subjects that Ukrainian president Zelensky's influential adviser spoke about in his interview with Telex not too long ago.