The Secretariat of the State Language Protection Commissioner continues to receive appeals of citizens regarding violations of the language law by court staff.  

In this regard, in 2023, the Commissioner began to implement two measures of state control over the use of the state language in the courts of Dnipropetrovsk (application of non-state language during the performance of official duties by a court employee) and Khmelnytskyi (making a court decision in non-state language) regions.

It should be noted that the issue of compliance with the legislation on the state language in courts is under special control of the State Language Protection Commissioner, taking into account the disappointing results of monitoring the Unified State Register of Court Decisions, conducted in 2021. Then the Secretariat of the Commissioner recorded 49 violations of the Law of Ukraine "On Ensuring the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language" by courts in 12 regions of Ukraine and in the city of Kyiv. 

When monitoring, the most violations of the language law by the judicial authorities were established in Kharkiv region (19), Kyiv (11) and Odesa region (7). Violations were also recorded in Volyn, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Zhytomyr, Kyiv, Luhansk, Mykolayiv, Kherson, Cherkasy and Chernihiv regions. All violations relate to the publication of court decisions in russian.

"Inclusion in the Unified State Register of Court Decisions in a non-state language is a violation of the provisions of part one of Article 14 of the Law, which provides that the courts of Ukraine are prosecuted, and records management is carried out in the state language, and the provisions of part one of Article 12 of the Law of Ukraine "On the Judicial System and Status of Judges", which stipulates that legal proceedings and record keeping in courts of Ukraine are carried out in the state language," the Commissioner Taras Kremin recalled.  

He also noted that in accordance with Article 9 of the Law of Ukraine "On Ensuring the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language", all officials and officials of enterprises, institutions and organizations of state and communal ownership, including employees of court apparatuses, are obliged to speak the state language and use it during the performance of official duties.

The Commissioner also added that despite the numerous violations that are still recorded by Ukrainian citizens, the situation with compliance with the language law by judges and court staff has been improved. 

According to him it was facilitated by the systematic work carried out by the Secretariat of the Commissioner. "In order to eliminate the identified violations in the activities of courts or to take measures to prevent such violations in the future, we have repeatedly sent letters with recommendations to both individual courts and the State Judicial Administration of Ukraine", Taras Kremin said.  

As you know, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine in its decision of July 14, 2021, which recognized the language law as constitutional, stressed that the threat to the Ukrainian language is equivalent to a threat to the national security of Ukraine.

According to Article 14 of the Law of Ukraine "On Ensuring the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language"

    • in the courts of Ukraine, legal proceedings are carried out, and record keeping is carried out in the state language; 

    • in the judicial process, a language other than the state language may be used in the procedure determined by the procedural codes of Ukraine and the Law of Ukraine "On the Judicial System and Status of Judges"; 

    • courts make decisions and publish them in the state language in the manner prescribed by the law. The text of the court decision is made taking into account the standards of the state language.