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The session on the Law on Languages is postponed / Head of the Constitutional Court in Skopje: A decision will be made by spring of next year

Politiko 2024-12-11 16:49:26

The session on the Law on Languages is postponed / Head of the

The Constitutional Court of North Macedonia today postponed the decision regarding the initiatives to assess the constitutionality of the Law on the Use of Languages, which concerns the Albanian language. A series of initiatives opposing the widespread use of the Albanian language were raised immediately after the adoption of the law in 2019, but the court did not deal with them for more than five years.

The head of the Constitutional Court said that by the spring of next year, the court will make a decision. The case has sparked great dissatisfaction among Albanians, but also clashes between opposition and ruling parties. The initiatives for the Law on Languages were sent to the Constitutional Court after the law was approved in 2019, while the removal of the phrase “Albanian language” in brackets was requested in one of the articles where it is stated that “the language spoken by over 20 percent of the population is a language in official use, alongside Macedonian and its Cyrillic alphabet”.

Among those who raised the initiatives to oppose the law was an official of the VMRO-DPMNE, then in opposition and later the leader of the nationalist party “The Left”, Macedonian professors of law and other individuals. The Albanian members of the court, Osman Kadriu and Naser Hajdari, refused to participate in the meeting where the legal provisions related to the use of the Albanian language were to be discussed. The third member, Fatmir Skender of Turkish origin, also left the session after his proposal to remove the initiatives on the Law on Languages from the agenda was not accepted.

When the law was adopted in 2019, it was sent for evaluation to the Venice Commission, which gave the opinion that some articles were difficult to implement, such as judicial procedures in two languages. The law was not decreed by the then President Gjorgje Ivanov and some of the articles remained controversial and were never put into practice, such as the use of Albanian in courts even if all parties were Albanian, or the emblems in two languages on police and army uniforms, or bilingualism on banknotes.

At today's session of the Constitutional Court, five of the six judges present voted to first hold a preparatory session, where they would invite foreign and domestic experts and consult with the Venice Commission and then make a decision. The preparatory session deals with disputed legal issues. The President of the Constitutional Court, Darko Kostadinovski, said that a decision will be made in the coming months. Kostadinovski rejects the accusations of ethnic voting within the court.

As the court was beginning its session, the leaders of the European Front coalition, Ali Ahmeti and Ziadin Sela, spoke to several hundred protesters gathered in front of the Constitutional Court, where they called on the judges not to touch the Albanian language, not to incite unrest and destabilization in the country.

The court session has increased the clashes between the parties of the government coalition "VLEN" and the "European Front". The chairman of the Besa Movement, Bilall Kasami, emphasized on social networks that the representatives of the DUI knew that the VLEN coalition would not allow the banning of the Albanian language. It seems that today's decision of the Court was announced by the Macedonian Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski, who a few days ago said at a press conference that "on December 11th nothing would happen at the Constitutional Court". However, today in the center of Skopje an increased police presence was observed with reinforcements and armored vehicles near state institutions. / VOA