How Far Can You Study in Hungarian? Six Years of Debate over Article 7 of the Education Act

At the western edge of Ukraine, bordering Hungary, Zakarpattia Oblast is home to a concentrated ethnic Hungarian population. The 2001 All-Ukrainian Population Census counted 156,600 Hungarians nationwide (0.3% of the population), of whom 151,500 lived in Zakarpattia Oblast, making up 12.1% of the oblast’s population. In the town of Berehove within the oblast, 48.1% of residents were Hungarian. Ukraine has held a census only this once, so there is no more recent official figure.

What language is used to teach this population’s children has, since 2017, become a major point of contention between Ukraine and Hungary. The trigger was Article 7 of the Education Act (Law No. 2145-VIII), adopted on September 5, 2017. The rules have since changed three times: with the 2020 Complete General Secondary Education Act, and with an amendment in December 2023. The overall framework of Ukraine’s state language law is covered in our article on Ukraine’s state language law and its staged approach. This article focuses on the language of schooling.

What the 2017 Article 7 established

Article 7, paragraph 1 provides that “the language of instruction in educational institutions is the state language.” The state language is Ukrainian (Article 10 of the constitution). Beyond this, the law divided the scope for studying in a minority language according to the type of minority.

• National minorities (Hungarians, Romanians, Poles, and others): in public preschool and primary education (grades 1–4), the right to study in the minority’s own language alongside Ukrainian is guaranteed. This right is exercised by forming separate classes (groups) within Ukrainian-language schools
• Indigenous peoples (Crimean Tatars and others): the right to study in their own language alongside Ukrainian is guaranteed throughout preschool and the full course of general secondary education
• All national minorities and indigenous peoples: the right to study their own language as a subject is guaranteed at general secondary schools
• Paragraph 4: depending on the curriculum, one or more subjects may be taught in two or more languages — the state language together with English or another official EU language

For grade 5 and above, Article 7 says nothing about the right to study in a national minority’s language. Paragraph 4, however, left room for teaching some subjects in an official EU language (Hungarian, Romanian, Polish, Bulgarian, Greek, German, or Slovak). Minority languages that are not official EU languages (Russian, Belarusian, Yiddish, and others) have no such room.

How large this change was can be seen by comparing it with the schools as they had been. According to an opinion of the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission (European Commission for Democracy through Law), Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science stated in a document dated October 27, 2017 that there were 735 schools nationwide teaching entirely in a minority language, with Ukrainian studied only as a subject, attended by about 400,000 children. The law allowed children who had begun studying in a minority language before September 1, 2018 to continue under the previous rules until September 1, 2020, while gradually increasing the number of subjects taught in Ukrainian (final and transitional provisions).

The Hungarian government’s objections, and the Council of Europe’s opinion

The Hungarian government objected strongly from immediately after the law’s adoption. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said on September 7, 2017 that the amendment “severely violates the rights of the Hungarian minority,” and that the Hungarian government would act in every European forum to prevent the new rules from taking effect. On October 10 that year, in Uzhhorod, Zakarpattia Oblast, he said Hungary would raise the review of the EU–Ukraine Association Agreement at a meeting of EU foreign ministers, on the grounds that the law violated it. On May 24, 2018, the ministry announced it had submitted a memorandum to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) calling for a review of its policy toward Ukraine, citing the protection of the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia. In each case, this is a record of what the Hungarian government claimed.

The Education Act was published in the Verkhovna Rada’s newspaper Holos Ukrainy on September 27, 2017 and took effect the following day. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, in Resolution 2189 of October 12, regretted that there had been no substantive consultation with minority representatives on the new Article 7, and said that an appropriate balance did not appear to have been struck between the official language and minority languages. The resolution also affirmed the principle that it is legitimate to promote acquisition of the state’s official language and to require education in it for everyone.

The Ukrainian government referred Article 7 to the Venice Commission, which adopted an opinion (CDL-AD(2017)030) at its plenary session of December 8–9, 2017. The opinion acknowledged that strengthening the state language and ensuring all citizens can acquire it is a “legitimate and commendable aim.” It went on to note that Article 7 reduces the scope for education in minority languages, particularly in secondary education, and lacks clarity as a piece of legislation. Its recommendations included using paragraph 4 to guarantee education in official EU languages at an adequate level, revising the transitional provisions to allow more time for the reform, exempting private schools from the new language requirements, and beginning a dialogue with minority representatives. It also stated that disadvantaging languages that are not official EU languages raises a problem of discrimination.

The ruling of Ukraine’s Constitutional Court

Domestically, 48 members of the Verkhovna Rada sought a constitutional review of the Education Act. The Constitutional Court, in Decision No. 10-r/2019 of July 16, 2019, ruled the law constitutional. The decision states that the law guarantees national minorities and indigenous peoples the right to learn their mother tongue while also requiring that they learn the state language, and that being unable to learn the state language is an obstacle to minority peoples living in society. It also holds that it is for the legislature to decide at which stage of education, and how many hours, are devoted to instruction in the mother tongue.

The ratios set by the 2020 law

Article 5 of the Complete General Secondary Education Act (Law No. 463-IX), adopted on January 16, 2020, set minimum shares of instruction time in Ukrainian for grade 5 and above, differentiated by minority language.

The State Language Act (Law No. 2704-VIII) of April 25, 2019 extended, to September 1, 2023, the deadline for children who had begun studying in a minority language that is an official EU language before September 1, 2018 to continue under the previous rules, on condition of gradually increasing the number of subjects taught in Ukrainian. This deadline was extended further, to September 1, 2024, by a law of June 10, 2023 (No. 3143-IX).

What the December 2023 amendment changed

On June 17, 2022, the European Commission, in its opinion recommending that Ukraine be made a candidate for membership, listed among seven measures “finalize the reform of the legal framework for national minorities, in line with the Venice Commission recommendations, and adopt an effective mechanism for its implementation without delay.” Ukraine adopted a Law on National Minorities (No. 2827-IX) on December 13, 2022, but the Venice Commission, in its opinion of June 2023 (CDL-AD(2023)021), recommended further postponing the phased transition of schools in minority languages and revising it in light of its 2017 opinion.

On December 8, 2023, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a law (No. 3504-IX) amending certain laws “taking into account the expert assessment of the Council of Europe and its bodies regarding the rights of national minorities (communities),” which took effect on the 10th of that month. Regarding the language of schooling, the following points changed.

• A sentence was added to Article 7 of the Education Act and Article 5, paragraph 1 of the Complete General Secondary Education Act: “In classes studying in a national minority language that is an official EU language, the right to use that language in education alongside the state language is guaranteed”
• In classes in a minority language that is an official EU language, both basic secondary education (grades 5–9) and specialized secondary education (grades 10–12) may be taught in that language. Ukrainian language, Ukrainian literature, and Ukrainian history, however (and, in specialized secondary education, also “Defense of Ukraine”), are taught in Ukrainian. Schools may choose to increase the number of subjects taught in Ukrainian
• Children who began studying in a minority language that is an official EU language before September 1, 2018 may continue under the previous rules, with no deadline, until they complete general secondary education
• Private universities may freely choose their language of instruction from among the official EU languages (Ukrainian is studied as a separate subject)

For classes in a minority language that is not an official EU language, the 2020 rule requiring at least 80% of instruction time in Ukrainian from grade 5 onward remained unchanged. Six days after this law was adopted, on December 14, 2023, the European Council decided to open accession negotiations with Ukraine (see our article on the EU accession negotiations).

Reading the figures and the legal text

The only usable figure for Zakarpattia Oblast’s population is the 2001 census. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, some people have left the country and others have taken refuge in the oblast, but there is no newer official figure broken down by ethnicity. The number of schools and classes teaching in Hungarian is also not stated in the laws or opinions covered in this article.

The legal texts are as posted on the Verkhovna Rada’s legal database as of September 24, 2026. Article 7 of the Education Act was also amended in June 2024 (the section on learning English), and the law continues to be amended even during wartime. The overall treatment of languages other than Ukrainian is covered in the “Languages other than Ukrainian” section of our article on the state language law, and indigenous languages such as Crimean Tatar in our article on Ukraine’s indigenous peoples law.