Language regulations still pending

  • 2000-08-17
  • Anna Pridanova
RIGA -- Regulations to implement Latvia's language law are awaiting the Cabinet's approval after a round of changes prompted by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The nine regulations, which will govern language from the workplace to public meetings, have to be approved before Sept. 1, the day the law goes into effect.

The latest revisions of the regulations were in response to issues raised in early August by Max van der Stoel, OSCE's high commissioner for national minorities, on the heels of protests by members of the Russian-speaking community.

His letter addressed six of the nine regulations in the language law, passed last December on the eve of Latvia's bid to the European Union. In general, his concerns may be summarized as some parts of the regulations are not proportional to the interests of democratic society. In his letter van der Stoel reveals a hope that the "regulations will ultimately all conform to the letter and spirit of the Law."

OSCE experts visited Latvia on Aug. 11 to clarify and work out comments van der Stoel's office released the week before. The experts meeting with the Latvian work group, composed of top Justice and Foreign ministries' officials, resulted in the latest version of the regulations, dated Aug. 11.

Still the committee of the Cabinet of Ministers did not review the regulations on Aug. 14 as scheduled. The review of nine regulations was delayed for a week because the Justice Ministry submitted drafts only at 10 a.m. on Monday, according to a government spokesman.

A week's delay occurred because the committee meets only on Mondays, said Aidis Freidenfelds, spokesman for the State Chancellery.

If the regulations make it cleanly through the committee, they will be moved to the Cabinet of Ministers for approval, said Freidenfelds.

The latest version of the regulations was made available on the Justice Ministry Web site Aug. 11. OSCE's Latvian mission this week is translating the regulations and will send them to the Hague this week.

OSCE's Latvian mission member Juka Pikannens would not comment on the changes introduced Aug. 11, because the Justice Ministry is "still doing some slight changes."

One of van der Stoel's concerns was the regulations on language proficiency in employment.

The law will regulate the language proficiency requirements for different state jobs. These regulations are optional for private sector enterprises, unless the company subcontracts for the state.

According to an OSCE statement, these regulations are not clear and are inaccessible for the broad population to which they are addressed.

A list of numerical codes that correspond to every job and signify the required language proficiency, which van der Stoel criticized as being confusing to the public, remains in the regulations.

Dzintra Hirsa, head of the state Language Center and the chief author of the regulations, argues that the coded list simply encompasses more jobs than a text list could.

"None of the Western countries have such classifier, as far as I know," she said. "But in Latvia many institutions use it quite a lot."

The requirements of near-native-language proficiency stipulated for jobs such as top government officials, doctors, university lectors, which according to Stoel "would exceed proportionality for any public interest conceivable in relation to virtually any profession or position," were substituted with requirements similar to the other classifications, not just near-native.

It reads: "A person is capable to converse freely about everyday topics as well as profession, or job position related topics. A person can communicate according to the situation, use different styles and moods of expression, write different-difficulty texts."

The language knowledge categories' descriptions also lost their vocabulary requirements.

"Unfortunately," said Hirsa, commenting on the "near-native language" requirement. "Yes, these were very good requirements, very adequate. But everyone treated them as a political and not methodological issue. 'Native language' is one of the major criteria in the methodology of any language," said Hirsa.