Legal position of the German language in South Tyrol
The legal status of the German language in South Tyrol is regulated by the Second Statute of Autonomy . The German language has been its adoption throughout the region Trentino-Alto Adige and therefore also in the province of Bolzano and South Tyrol the Italian language equivalent. Article 99 of the Statute (Decree of the President of the Republic of August 31, 1972, No. 670) reads:
In the region, the German language is on an equal footing with the Italian language, which is the official state language. In files with legal force and whenever this Statute provides for a bilingual version, the Italian wording is authoritative.
This means that German is the official regional language of Italy. De facto , however, German is only used as the official language in South Tyrol , as the implementation regulations for the use of languages only apply to the area of the autonomous province of Bolzano - South Tyrol.
Use of language in the public service
The German-speaking citizens have the right to communicate with the court offices and with the organs and offices of the public administration that are based in the province of Bolzano or have regional jurisdiction (the latter also if they are based in Trentino) as well as with the concession companies that provide public services in South Tyrol to use their language.
The offices, organs and concessionaires use the language of those who address them in written and oral communication and answer in the language in which the process was initiated by another organ or office; If the correspondence is opened ex officio, it is conducted in the presumed language of the citizen to whom it is addressed. The European Court of Justice ruled that the possibility of using the German language before the South Tyrolean civil courts should not be reserved solely for Italian citizens residing in this region; on the contrary, every EU citizen must have this possibility.
The Italian or German language can be used in the meetings of the collegiate bodies of the region, the province of Bolzano and the local bodies.
In the other cases, the separate use of Italian and German is recognized.
This does not affect the sole use of the Italian language within the military institutions .
Violation of the right to use one's mother tongue
The implementing provisions on the use of language, contained in the Decree of the President of the Republic of July 15, 1988, No. 574, provide for the nullity of an administrative act if it is not written in the mother tongue of the person concerned.
The citizen can raise the objection of invalidity within ten days. All that is needed is a letter in which the person concerned declares that they have not been dealt with in their mother tongue, or even an oral complaint. The objection is submitted either to the authority responsible for the act or to the municipal office at the place of residence of the person concerned. The objection results in the administrative act being temporarily ineffective.
For its part, the authorities have ten days to respond. If she considers the objection to be justified, she repeats the act in the other language. If the authority rejects the appeal, it must inform the person concerned within ten days. The citizen can then appeal to the regional administrative court. If the authority lets the ten-day period expire unused, the administrative act objected to by the citizen is finally ineffective.
Access to the public service
The candidates for the civil service must prove knowledge of German and Italian, this also applies to transfers from purely Italian-speaking areas.
An exception to this rule applies to applicants for the teaching profession. Since the schools are run separately by mother tongue, teachers have to B. German mother tongue in German schools do not necessarily have a certificate of bilingualism. If they have this proof, they will benefit from a salary increase in the form of a bilingual allowance.
Proof of bilingualism
Proof of bilingualism must be presented to obtain employment in the public sector. In accordance with Decree of the President of the Republic No. 752/1976, bilingual examinations are offered by a separate official service. Since 2010, however, there have also been other officially recognized options for proving language qualifications: You can submit an equivalent certificate from internationally recognized bodies or prove language skills through your personal educational biography. There are four different exam levels, depending on the desired career in the civil service: C1 (for the higher career), B2 (for the upper career), B1 (for the middle) and A2 (for the simple career).
An acquired bilingual certificate is valid indefinitely.
German-speaking place names
In South Tyrol the place names are officially German-Italian bilingualism and regional (Val Gardena, Gadertal) Ladin-German-Italian trilingualism . All public administrations must therefore also use the German place names for German-speaking citizens if a state law has determined their existence and approved the designation . This is what the Statute of Autonomy provides. In fact, no such law has yet been passed.
Against this background, the South Tyrolean place names repeatedly represent an ethnopolitical point of controversy. Only the Italian place and field names created by Ettore Tolomei , which became binding for all South Tyrolean villages in 1923 under Mussolini's fascist regime, are officially valid . In the absence of a toponomics law , the original German (and Ladin ) terms are used everywhere, but are only tolerated.
All place-name signs and traffic signs are therefore bilingual (in Ladin-speaking parts of the country even trilingual). The Italian name comes first on motorways, state roads and at almost all train stations. The signs for the state roads show the German name as the first (or above).
There are various proposed solutions for a revision of the South Tyrolean place name practice:
- Some politicians in the German-speaking group are calling for Tolomei's place names to be completely abolished. Others suggest naming the localities based on their largest population group, so that communities with a negligibly small percentage of Italian-speaking population - 93 out of 116 - should only receive the traditional German or Ladin place names. In the case of field names, the invented Italianized designations should generally be avoided.
- On the Italian side they want to keep all place names Tolomei, but the German names are to be officially recognized in the future (to date they are largely available, but only tolerated).
The provisions on the autonomy of South Tyrol , which have constitutional status, provide in this regard that the state has the legislative power with regard to place naming, with the obligation to be bilingual in the area of the province of Bolzano (Art. 8 IZ 2 special statute). Some observers point out that bilingualism should not be equated with an obligation to be twinned.
The language group declaration or language group assignment declaration
In order to determine the proportions of the three recognized language groups in South Tyrol (German, Italian, Ladin), all citizens are asked to declare their language group affiliation or assignment to the census that takes place every 10 years. This is legally relevant because public offices are awarded in the same ratio, as are social housing and other promotional measures. A personal declaration of language group membership or language group assignment declaration is then required by law for an application or use of such public funds.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Special Statute for Trentino-South Tyrol (PDF; 627 kB)
- ↑ Press release of the ECJ No. 40/14 of March 27, 2014 regarding the judgment in the case C-322/13 Ulrike Elfriede Grauel Rüffer / Katerina Pokorná
- ^ A b Francesco Palermo : Riflessioni giuridiche sulla disciplina della toponomastica nella Provincia autonoma di Bolzano . In: Hannes Obermair u. a. (Ed.): Regional civil society in motion. Festschrift for Hans Heiss (= Cittadini innanzi tutto ). Folio Verlag, Vienna-Bozen 2012, ISBN 978-3-85256-618-4 , p. 341-352 .
- ↑ http://www.provincia.bz.it/ASTAT/downloads/mit17_02.pdf
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
