Ukraine: Tkachenko supported the proposal to postpone fines for violating the language law

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Minister of Culture and Information Policy Oleksandr Tkachenko supported the initiative to postpone for a year and a half the norm on imposing fines for violating the language law. As Ukrinform reports , Tkachenko stated this during the forum Ukraine 30, Culture, Media, Tourism.

Tkachenko said, if we are talking about two amendments (to the language law - Ed.) Of different deputies, including from the Servant of the People, then in one case it is Buzhansky's amendments, which abolish fines in general, in another amendments Kravchuk, Poturaev and Kornienko, which defer penalties for one and a half years, until all other fines are imposed. We support the second amendment.

Tkachenko stressed that there is no common platform that would unite all efforts to promote the Ukrainian language, and the Ministry of Culture is currently working on it.

Tkachenko said, if we say that we first impose fines on an elderly woman from Odessa or Kharkiv just because she doesn't know or can't speak Ukrainian in her shop, I don't think we can convince most of the seeds that does not speak Ukrainian well enough to be taught. Gentle Ukrainization, promotion of the Ukrainian language will allow to do it..

It will be recalled that the bill №4638 "On Amendments to Article 57 of the Law of Ukraine On Ensuring the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language was registered on January 21, 2021. etc. The authors propose to remove from Article 57 of the law the provisions concerning the imposition of fines for violations of the law on language.

Bill №4638-2 "On Amendments to the Law of Ukraine On Ensuring the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language on the entry into force of Article 57 of this law was registered on February 9, 2021. Among its initiators Nikita Poturaev, Eugene Kravchuk, Tatiana Ryabukha, Elizabeth Bogutskaya, Alexander Kornienko. The authors of the project propose to postpone fines for violating the law for 1.5 years (until July 2022). People's deputies explain the proposal to amend the law on language by the desire to ease the conditions of economic activity during a coronavirus pandemic.

Relevant bills with amendments to the law will be considered by the profile committee of the Humanitarian and Information Policy of the Verkhovna Rada.

Well-known public figures believe that the proposal of the Servants of the People to withdraw or postpone fines for violating the law on language is an outright provocation.

In Ukraine, from January 16, 2021, the entire service sector should switch to the Ukrainian language. Article 57 of this law provides for a fine for its violation, which may be imposed by the Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language if the party refuses to request the elimination of the violation, and such violation is recorded again within a year.