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Central Europe
September 29, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 11
of judges and make the system work better for citizens, for example by shortening procedures and the time it takes to close cases. PiS says the EU commission's concerns about rule of law and the politicisation of courts are groundless.
Duda vetoed two out of three key laws pushed
in the parliament by PiS amidst strong street protests in July. Some observers say that the protests were instrumental in Duda’s decision to block changes. The president himself said he felt
Hungary pledges to block Ukraine’s European integration after Kyiv's adoption of controversial education law
bne IntelliNews
Hungary will block "all steps within the Euro- pean Union that would represent a step forward in Ukraine’s European integration process in the spirit of the Eastern Partnership programme", Hungary’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto said on September 26.
Hungary’s outburst followed Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's decision to sign a new education law on September 25, which was approved earlier by the country's parliament, the Verkhovna Rada.
According to the Hungarian authorities, the new law reduces the rights of minorities to receive ed- ucation in their native languages. There are some 150,000 ethnic Hungarians living in the western part of the country. The government has made it a priority to support financially the cultural and educational institutions of ethnic minorities living in Hungary’s neighbours.
overlooked by the ruling party in the debate about the reform.
The president signed off on the third bill, which is reforming the system of country’s common courts and, critics say, gives too much power over nominating court chairs to hawkish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro. The bill is subject to an infringement procedure from the European Commission over discriminating against female judges in terms of retirement age.
We won’t allow it,” Prime Minister Viktor Orban said about Ukraine's EU integration.
According to the new legislation in the future children from national minorities will be taught all subjects in Ukrainian from the fifth grade upwards (age 10). Poland and Romania have also expressed concern about the norms of the new law, which was mainly targeted at the Russian-speaking population living in the eastern regions of Ukraine. The Russian parliament has called the law an "act of ethnocide” and spoke out against the "forced as- similation” of the local Russian speakers.
"We can guarantee that all this will be painful
for Ukraine in the future", Szijjarto said regard- ing Hungary’s response to the signing of the new legislation, speaking from Singapore, where he arrived as part of an official delegation headed by Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Szijjarto issued a directive under which Hungar- ian diplomats would not support any initiative by