THE APPLICATION OF THE EUROPEAN CHARTER FOR REGIONAL OR MINORITY LANGUAGES IN ROMANIA IN THE FIELD OF EDUCATION (English version)

The European Charter for regional or minority languages was adopted under the auspices of the Council of Europe on the 5th of November 1992 in Strasbourg and became effective on the 1st of March 1998. Romania signed the Charter on the 17th of July 1995 and ratified it by means of law 287/2007. The regional or minority languages include the languages traditionally used in a certain area of a state by the citizens of that state which form a group numerically inferior to the rest of the state population and which are different from the official language or languages of the respective state. The phrase mentioned above does not refer to the dialects of the state’s official language or to the languages used by immigrants. In this article we have tried to identify the way in which the right to education in one’s mother tongue is applied based on the provisions of the Charter and on the internal legislation, as well as its instruments. Also, we analyzed the main difficulties that one is confronted with in practice and we suggested a series of measures for the improvement of the institutional practices with regard to the right of the minorities from Romania to study in their mother tongue. The observance of this right necessarily assumes the creation of certain conditions for a proper development of the didactic process starting with the number of hours allocated, the proficiency of the didactic staff or of the handbooks.