APPLICATION of the CHARTER in NORWAY 2 Monitoring Cycle A
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Strasbourg, 3 September 2003 ECRML (2003) 2 EUROPEAN CHARTER FOR REGIONAL OR MINORITY LANGUAGES APPLICATION OF THE CHARTER IN NORWAY 2nd monitoring cycle A. Report of the Committee of Experts on the Charter B. Recommendation of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on the application of the Charter by Norway 2 The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages provides for a control mechanism to evaluate how the Charter is applied in a State Party with a view to, where necessary, making Recommendations for improving its legislation, policy and practices. The central element of this procedure is the Committee of Experts, set up under Article 17 of the Charter. Its principal purpose is to report to the Committee of Ministers on its evaluation of compliance by a Party with its undertakings, to examine the real situation of regional or minority languages in the State and, where appropriate, to encourage the Party to gradually reach a higher level of commitment. To facilitate this task, the Committee of Ministers adopted, in accordance with Article 15.1, an outline for subsequent periodical reports that a Party is required to submit to the Secretary General. The report should be made public by the State. This outline requires the State to give an account of the concrete application of the Charter, the general policy for the languages protected under Part II and, in more precise terms, all measures that have been taken in application of the provisions chosen for each language protected under Part III of the Charter. The Committee’s first task is therefore to examine the information contained in the periodical report for all the relevant regional or minority languages on the territory of the State concerned. The Committee’s role is to evaluate the existing legal acts, regulations and real practice applied in each State for its regional or minority languages. It has established its working methods accordingly. The Committee gathers information from the respective authorities and from independent sources within the State, so as to attempt to obtain a fair and just overview of the real language situation. After a preliminary examination of an initial periodical report, the Committee submits, if necessary, a number of questions to each Party to obtain supplementary information from the authorities on matters it considers insufficiently developed in the report itself. This written procedure is usually followed up by an “on-the-spot visit” by a delegation of the Committee to the State in question. During this visit the delegation meets bodies and associations whose work is closely related to the use of the relevant languages, and consults the authorities on matters that have been brought to its attention. This information-gathering process is designed to enable the Committee to evaluate more effectively the application of the Charter in the State concerned. Having concluded this process, the Committee of Experts adopts its own report. This report is submitted to the Committee of Ministers, together with suggestions for recommendations that the latter could decide to address to one or more Parties, as may be required. 3 CONTENTS ND A. 2 REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF EXPERTS ON THE APPLICATION OF THE CHARTER IN NORWAY............................................................................................4 CHAPTER 1 - BACKGROUND INFORMATION....................................................................................................4 1.1. The work of the Committee of Experts..............................................................................4 1.2. Presentation of the regional or minority language situation in Norway ...................................6 1.3. Particular issues arising from the evaluation of the report ...................................................7 CHAPTER 2 - MEASURES TAKEN TO IMPLEMENT THE COMMITTEE OF MINISTERS’ RECOMMENDATIONS ...........................8 CHAPTER 3 - THE COMMITTEE’S EVALUATION IN RESPECT OF PARTS II AND III OF THE CHARTER ..............................10 3.1. The evaluation in respect of Part II of the Charter ............................................................10 3.2. The evaluation in respect of Part III of the Charter ...........................................................16 CHAPTER 4 - FINDINGS OF THE COMMITTEE..................................................................................................31 APPENDIX I: INSTRUMENT OF RATIFICATION..................................................................................................33 APPENDIX II: RECOMMENDATION RECCHL(2001)5 OF THE COMMITTEE OF MINISTERS ON THE APPLICATION OF THE EUROPEAN CHARTER FOR REGIONAL OR MINORITY LANGUAGES BY NORWAY..............................34 APPENDIX III: COMMENTS BY THE NORWEGIAN AUTHORITIES ............................................................................35 B. RECOMMENDATION OF THE COMMITTEE OF MINISTERS OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE ON THE APPLICATION OF THE CHARTER BY NORWAY..............36 4 A. 2nd Report of the Committee of Experts on the application of the Charter in Norway adopted by the Committee of Experts on 29 August 2003 and presented to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in accordance with Article 16 of the Charter Chapter 1 - Background information 1. Norway signed the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (hereafter referred to as the Charter) on 5 November 1992 and deposited its instrument of ratification on 10 November 1993. The Norwegian authorities published the text of the Charter in a Royal Decree of 1 October 1993. The Charter entered into force in Norway on 1 March 1998. 2. Article 15, paragraph 1 of the Charter requires States Parties to submit three-yearly reports in a form prescribed by the Committee of Ministers1. The Norwegian authorities presented their second periodical report to the Secretary General of the Council of Europe in March 2002. The work on the second Norwegian report began in August 2001, when the Sami parliament and national minority representatives were invited to present their view on the situation of their languages. 3. In its previous evaluation report on Norway (ECRML (2001) 6), the Committee of Experts outlined particular areas where policy and practice could be further improved. The Committee of Ministers took note of the report submitted by the Committee of Experts and adopted Recommendation RecChl (2001) 5, which was addressed to the Norwegian authorities. This second evaluation report contains information on how the authorities have taken into consideration the recommendations of the Committee of Ministers, as well as the observations made by the Committee of Experts, contained in its previous evaluation report. 4. This report has been drafted in a manner which allows the reader to have a complete overview of the situation of regional or minority languages in Norway, as well as to comment on the extent to which Norway fulfils its undertakings. The Committee has nevertheless focused especially on the recommendations made by the Committee of Ministers, and on the particular observations made by the Committee of Experts. 5. The Committee recognises the short time the Norwegian authorities had to implement the Recommendations as they were adopted only in November 2001 by the Committee of Ministers and the authorities were due to present their second report only a year later. Furthermore, the new outline for three- yearly periodical reports was adopted by the Committee of Ministers in February 2002. The delay in adopting the outline did not, however, prevent the authorities from submitting their periodical report to the Secretary General of the Council of Europe on time in June 2002. 1.1. The work of the Committee of Experts 6. In its evaluation, the Committee of Experts tried, in particular, to assess the measures taken by the authorities to improve the situation of regional or minority languages. 7. The Committee of Experts then organised an “on-the-spot” visit to Oslo, Norway on 6-7 November 2002, with representatives of the Romani and Romanes languages, and Kven and Sami, taking part. On the second day of its visit the Committee met the authorities responsible for implementing the Charter. 8. This evaluation report is based on the information the Committee obtained from Norway’s second periodical report , interviews held with representatives of the regional or minority languages in Norway and the Norwegian authorities and from other independent sources, in accordance with Article 16.2 of the Charter. The Committee adopted the report on 26 March 2003. 1 MIN-LANG (2002) 1 Outline for 3-yearly periodical reports as adopted by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. 5 6 1.2. Presentation of the regional or minority language situation in Norway 9. There are two standard written variants of Norwegian, Bokmål (Book Language) and Nynorsk (New Norwegian). Bokmål is the most widely used language. Its origin is written Danish, which was the only official written language used during the 400 years Norway was under Danish rule. Nynorsk is less widely used , and takes its origins from mid-19th century Norwegian dialects. 10. The languages on the territory of Norway afforded protection under the Charter are Sami, Kven/Finnish and the two non-territorial languages: Romani and Romanes. All these languages are covered by Part II of the Charter. 11. Sami is an official language in Norway and, as identified in the instrument of ratification, consists of four languages