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The Constitutional Court in Latvia declared illegal the ban on teaching in universities in foreign languages, Sputnik reports. The court stated that this was contrary to the Framework Convention on the Rights of National Minorities.
According to lawyer Elizaveta Kravtsova, the court had to agree that the defense of the Latvian language cannot be reduced to fighting other languages. The court for the first time recognized the violation of the convention, emphasizing that at least philological and cultural programs should be allowed in the languages of national minorities.
The parliament will have to make changes to the existing norms within a year.
The law prohibiting education in Russian in private universities in Latvia came into force in 2021. At state universities, Russian-language education was abandoned even earlier.
Russian-speaking Latvians and residents of other countries entered private universities, in many universities the number of students in Russian reached or exceeded 50%. The ban was opposed by economists as well. They argued that it would be unwise to destroy a sphere that is in such high demand.
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Riga said that the transition of education into Latvian does not comply with the universal prohibitions on discrimination on the basis of language and the requirements for the protection of children's rights.
The step taken by Riga was called ''monstrous'' by the Russian Foreign Ministry, recalling that respect for the languages of national minorities, even the smallest ones, is a tribute to ancestors and culture. Russian is the native language for a third of the Latvian population, and the same number of citizens of the country speak Russian. It is consistently among the most studied in the European Union, a huge number of Russian-speaking compatriots live in European countries.
Russkiy Mir
