The Estonian Parliament on Thursday rejected a bill that sought to ban the use of the Russian language in public spaces, a measure pushed by the Conservative People’s Party against the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Following the decision, some deputies have expressed their rejection of the measure, among them the Socialist Eduard Odinets, who has pointed out that it is «regrettable and absurd that the Parliament of a member state of the European Union has had to discuss the exclusion of a language from the public space», according to information from the daily ‘Postimees’.
Odinets also asserted that the Social Democrats «are in favor of all residents of the country knowing the Estonian language and that this should be the common language for communication».
However, he has qualified that «banning someone else’s native language is completely unfortunate and does not increase anyone’s interest in learning Estonian.» «It just does a disservice to the idea of learning languages,» he pointed out.
The regulation sought to amend the existing Language Act, as well as the Media Act and the Advertising Act, to provide that «Estonian public and private entities use only the state language when addressing the Estonian population.»
The draft included, in this regard, the possibility of introducing translations of Estonian texts in other languages as long as it was not Russian.
