President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed Bill No.16119, a law expanding educational rights for national minorities and indigenous peoples. Romanian President Nicusor Dan welcomed the legislation, saying mother-tongue education for ethnic Romanians is "no abstract matter" for families living in Ukraine.
The measure widens the use of eligible minority languages in schools, recognizes a special institutional status for minority-language schools and strengthens continuity of education. Hungarian, Romanian, Polish, Bulgarian and Slovak qualify as official languages of the European Union. Indigenous languages such as Crimean Tatar are also covered. Ukraine's Ministry of Education said the additional rights "do not apply to the Russian language."
The law was presented as progress on minority rights and as a step that could help open further EU accession clusters. The expanded guarantees for ethnic Hungarians and Romanians are linked in the report to Budapest's and Bucharest's ability to block or delay Ukraine's accession process.
The Venice Commission of the Council of Europe found in 2017 that less favorable treatment of non-EU languages, particularly Russian, was difficult to justify, and its 2023 opinion repeated discrimination concerns. Ukraine's Constitutional Court held in 2021 that preferential treatment for EU languages was permissible. The report also says 28% or more of Ukrainians still use both Russian and Ukrainian at home.