2012 Report on the Situation of National Minorities in the Czech Republic

One of the most important topics addressed in the report is the amendment to the law on the rules for setting up national minorities committees and in the labelling of streets and other public spaces in the languages of national minorities. Based on the results on the census of population, houses and flats in 2011, the report also calls for changes in the statutory obligation to set up committees for national minorities, especially at the local level.

Moreover, the document contains two comments introduced by the Czech government: one from the report of the Advisory Committee of the Council of Europe, and the other from the evaluation report of the Committee of Experts of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Both concern the fulfilment of obligations contained in the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the Chart.

The report does not forget to mention the issues regarding the change of the status of Vietnamese and Belarusian minorities. Moreover, the Council distinguishes the specific support of national minorities and Roma community integration support, especially in the chapter illustrating the activities of public administration at the local or regional level.

The biggest problem consistently indicated by the representatives of national minorities is the amount of subsidies from the state budget intended for the promotion of their organizations provided in the last two years (subsidy programs of the Ministry of Culture, and partially of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports).

The full text of the report is available HERE (Czech only).