Poland “discriminating towards German minority” with funding cuts, says German authorities official

Poland’s choice to chop by two thirds the variety of hours of German instructing offered to kids from the nation’s German minority is discriminatory and primarily based on a misunderstanding about how the instructing of Polish in Germany is funded, based on a German authorities official.

Final week, the schooling minister issued an ordinance introducing the cuts. That adopted a choice by parliament to cut back annual funding for instructing Poland’s 150,000-strong German minority by 40 million zloty (€8.8 million) and to as a substitute allocate cash to instructing Polish to members of the Polish diaspora in Germany.

The choice was supported by MPs from the ruling national-conservative Regulation and Justice (PiS) caucus, who argued that it restored “symmetry” between the 2 nations as a result of, whereas Poland supplies funding for instructing its German minority, Germany doesn’t do the identical for its massive Polish neighborhood.

Nonetheless, Bernd Fabritius, the German authorities’s commissioner for issues associated to ethnic German resettlers and nationwide minorities, says that this isn’t true. Whereas the federal authorities doesn’t present such funding, that’s as a result of schooling is run by particular person states.

He notes that these states collectively spend round €200 million yearly on instructing Polish to nearly 15,000 college students, stories TVN24.

Fabritius additionally pointed to the completely different authorized statuses of the respective communities. Poland’s German minority was created by the switch of German territory to Poland after the struggle, whereas Germany’s Polish minority is made up largely of immigrants and their descendants.

This week, Fabritius visited Opole – a Polish metropolis (which was Oppeln in Germany earlier than the Second World Conflict) with a big ethnic German inhabitants – in response to Poland slicing schooling funding.

“From the attitude of the German authorities,” he mentioned, Poland’s choice “means discrimination towards the German minority recognised in Poland as a nationwide minority”. He added that he needed to “appropriate the misconceptions on which this choice was primarily based”, stories Deutsche Welle.

Bernard Gaida, head of the Union of German Social and Cultural Associations in Poland, expressed comparable sentiment, noting that the Polish authorities’s choice was focused towards solely one of many nation’s varied recognised minorities. “We are able to’t think about that such a rule may perform in a democratic state,” he mentioned.

One of many Polish MPs who has pushed most vocally for the funding cuts, Janusz Kowalski, nonetheless, mentioned that the “German minority is telling lies, lies and extra lies”. He claims that, underneath the phrases of a 1991 treaty, “Germany is obliged to show Polish as a mom tongue in German faculties”.

However there “will not be a single German faculty” the place this occurs, mentioned Kowalski. As a substitute, Polish kids are solely given the potential of “studying the language as immigrants, which is humiliating”, he added, quoted by Telewizja Opolskie.

Fabritius and representatives of the German minority in Poland nonetheless hope {that a} decision to the problem will be present in discussions with the Polish authorities.

On Monday, a member of Poland’s ruling camp – PiS MEP and former schooling minister Anna Zalewska – likewise instructed Radio Opole that she is assured an settlement will be reached.

Poland’s German minority “are good neighbours, mates, nice lecturers”, she mentioned. “We should subsequently discover a resolution. I’ll meet representatives of the German minority inside the subsequent two weeks. Collectively, we will certainly discover a good resolution for the kids.”

Yesterday, the Council of Europe’s Committee of Specialists of the European Constitution for Regional or Minority Languages famous its “concern” at Poland’s choice to make cuts to instructing for its German minority.

Primary picture credit score: Roman Rogalski / Agencja Gazeta