A group of 15 university professors, led by constitutional law professor Tanja Karakamiseva, submitted a challenge before the Constitutional Court, calling on it to strike down the Law on the use of Languages.
The controversial law goes far beyond the provisions of the Constitution about the use of minority languages and turns Macedonia into a fully bilingual – Macedonian – Albanian country. The Venice Commission, where Karakamiseva is the Macedonian representative, recently published a highly critical opinion of the law, but pressed by his political imperative to win the Albanian votes, outgoing Prime Minister Zoran Zaev said he will not accept amending the law.
The law can’t be subverted to the politics or abused for the purpose of political gain. The opinion of the Venice Commission must be respected, the initiative of the group led by Karakamiseva says.
Previously, the opposition VMRO-DPMNE party submitted a challenge to the Constitutional Court, and also is demanding that amendments are introduced to the law, to put it in line with the Constitution.
The objections to the law include the fact that it violates the costituional provision that minority languages can be used as official languages only in municipalities where that minority constitutes at least 20 percent of the population. The Venice Commission also objected to the way the law was adopted, in a rushed procedure in Parliament that abused the so-called “EU flag rule”.
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