Illustration by David Simonds

Correction to this article

LANGUAGE laws may protect minority rights or infringe them. Slovakia's new law, which comes into force on September 1st, is under fire for its harshness. It imposes fines of up to €5,000 ($7,000) on those who break rules promoting the use of Slovak in public. Hungarian-speakers, who number around a tenth of the population, mainly in the south of the country, see that as a direct attack on their right to speak their mother-tongue. So do politicians in neighbouring Hungary. A long-running dispute between two of Europe's most prickly neighbours is turning nasty.

Slovakia's left-leaning populist government has been needling Hungary since it took power in 2006. It sidelined plans for a joint Hungarian-Slovak history textbook last year and has publicly endorsed the Benes Decrees, which expelled most Germans and many Hungarians from the then Czechoslovakia after 1945, as a punishment for their supposedly Nazi sympathies. The new law tightens rules about speaking Slovak in dealings with public officials: not just police officers or teachers, but also, say, doctors. Exceptions apply to monoglots, or in districts where the minority makes up a fifth or more of the population. Hungarian-language schools must conduct their administration in Slovak. The new law also lays down detailed instructions for the way in which memorials and plaques may be inscribed.

A party representing the Hungarian minority is mounting a challenge in the constitutional court: it calls the law “19th-century language imperialism”. The Slovak response similarly accuses the Hungarians of hankering for the 19th century: they dominated the region in the Habsburg era. The Slovak prime minister, Robert Fico, said the real problem was those wanting to bully Slovaks in the south of the country into learning Hungarian.

The Slovak foreign ministry has published (unilaterally) an expert opinion drawn up in confidence by Knut Vollebaek, high commissioner for national minorities at the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, a Vienna-based international organisation. Mr Vollebaek agrees that the bill does not in itself contravene international law or Slovakia's earlier commitments to protect minority languages. But his opinion also highlights concerns over the hasty passage of the new legislation and the danger that it may be interpreted arbitrarily.

The big question is the meaning of the requirement that Slovak be used “in public”. Would, say, a Hungarian-speakers' poetry club have to arrange for their meetings to be translated into Slovak? Perhaps not, but it is an odd thing to have to worry about these days in the European Union.

Grandstanding in the run-up to elections has fuelled the row. Mr Fico is gaining record popularity ratings. It helps divert opinion from issues such as corruption and economic decline. Mikulas Dzurinda, a former prime minister and opposition leader, says that the real danger to the Slovak language comes not from tongue-tied ethnic Hungarians, but from the debasing of Slovak by foul-mouthed chauvinists in the government, such as the leader of the Slovak National Party, Jan Slota. He recently provoked uproar by calling a policewoman (she says) a “cunt”. The charming gentleman's complaint? She had refused to allow his driver unauthorised entry to a parliamentary garage.





