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Zagreb - Science and Education Minister Radovan Fuchs said in the parliament on Thursday that the Bill on the Croatian Language laid down the basic rules for the official and public use of the Croatian language and secured a systematic expert care for the Croatian language.
"The purpose of this law is not to penalise but to protect, teach and underline the value of the language as an instrument for the expression of one's identity, history and culture," Fuchs said while presenting the bill.
He noted that aside from a provision in the Croatian Constitution, there is no legal regulation that determines in a uniform way or elaborates in greater detail the use of the standard Croatian language, adding that care for the Croatian language and its dialects is a duty for the state and state institutions, which, he said, is important for its preservation and future development.
Fuchs said that the bill defines that the standard Croatian language and Latin script are in official use in the country and that the Croatian language is used in written and oral communication by state authorities and bodies of local and regional government, as well as all public law bodies.
Exempt from the official use of the Croatian language are specific situations, when also the use of local idioms is possible.
The use of dialectal idioms will be possible in media content, notably when it is artistically justified, in film dubbing, etc. The bill also protects Croatian toponyms as part of the Croatian linguistic heritage and members of ethnic minorities can have education in their mother tongue at all levels of the education system.
The new law obliges the government to adopt, within two years from the entry into force of the law, a national plan for the Croatian linguistic policy, and appoint, within six months from its entry into force, a Council for the Croatian Language, which would have a chair and 14 members and would act as a coordinating advisory body looking after the Croatian language and promoting the culture of that language in the official and public use.
Fuchs said that in today's digital age it is especially important to protect the mother tongue as all big languages strongly "invade our linguistic community" on a daily basis, with communication patterns changing radically.
"It is a national interest for the Croatian language to develop within the confines of the profession, which is what this bill aims to achieve and which is what prompted its adoption," he said.
During numerous rebuttals, the bill was supported by members of the ruling HDZ party and the opposition Bridge party, while SDP MP Arsen Bauk remarked that nothing would change after the adoption of the law and that it was an attempt "to curry favour with the right-wing electorate ahead of elections."
Fuchs replied that the law did not infringe on a part of the vernacular and artistic expression but regulated how communication between state institutions should be like, and how the standard language would be used in Croatian language classes.
The minister also dismissed MP Katarina Peović's (Workers Front) claims that the law would criminalise dialects, explaining that school classes could be held in a dialect but that Croatian language classes must be held in the standard Croatian language.