New developments in the case of teaching German in Poland

The German minority has filed a complaint with the European Commission against the Polish government on the issue of limiting the teaching of German in schools. At the beginning of February, Education Minister Przemysław Czarnek issued two regulations. The first reduced the teaching of German as a minority language from three to one hour, leaving all other minorities with three hours. The second ordinance concerned the distribution of the educational part of the general subvention for local government units, introducing a reduction in expenditure on German language teaching by nearly 40 million PLN. FUEN, YEN and AGDM were among the many organisations to protest against these decisions.

The German minority has been ignored for several months by the Polish government in its fight to maintain the same rights as other national minorities in the country, and now they have turned to the European Commission: the Union of German Socio-Cultural Associations in Poland filed a complaint in hopes that the case will be dealt with by the European Court of Justice. The timeframe is short, as the restriction on learning German is to take effect from 1 September 2022.

The German minority also suspended its participation in the Joint Committee of Government and National and Ethnic Minorities.  The committee was established in 2005 with the main task to counteract the violation of minority rights. Before issuing the regulation on limiting the teaching of German, Minister Czarnek was obliged to consult with the committee, but he chose not to.

Here is the original article in Polish: Mniejszość niemiecka złożyła skargę do Komisji Europejskiej na decyzje ministra Czarnka i zawiesiła współpracę z polskim rządem (wyborcza.pl)

photo: Pixabay