The Bundestag adopted its 2023 budget that will, for the first time, include funds to finance teaching Polish at the mother tongue level for immigrants in a ‘first step’ to mend relations that have been on ice since the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party came to power.
Financed by the federal states until now, the Bundestag approved the government’s plan to allocate €1 million in 2023 and €2 million in both 2024 and 2025 for teaching Polish to children of Polish immigrants. The money will go to the Centre of Competences and Coordination of the Polish Language KoKoPol in St. Marienthal, Saxony.
“The federal government and its supporting parties made their first step towards complementary federal financing of (teaching) Polish as a mother tongue,” said Dietmar Nietan, German Foreign Ministry’s Coordinator for Cross-Border and Intersocial Cooperation with Poland, as quoted by Deutsche Welle.
“By virtue of the paramount role of the relations between Germany and Poland,” he added that the government is helping the federal states who decide school budgeting matters, including teaching immigrant children their mother tongues.
Poland has made financial support for teaching Polish among Warsaw’s key demands to Berlin. The issue became a hot topic last year as the Polish government reduced the sum for teaching the German language to the German minority in Poland – a decision Education Minister Przemysław Czarnek admitted was aimed at exerting pressure on Germany.
Poland spends an annual €50 million on teaching German as a mother tongue in the country, Czarnek told Deutsche Welle in an interview last month, noting at the time that if Germany were to increase its spending on teaching Polish to a similar amount, Warsaw would resume total financing of teaching German.
Though the sum approved by the Bundestag is lower than the €50 million yearly total, Berlin still believes that Poland will appreciate “the first step”.
“It is essential now that also the Polish side champions multilingualism, including non-discriminatory supporting teaching German as a minority language,” tweeted German Ambassador to Warsaw Thomas Bagger.
Relations between Warsaw and Berlin have been strained since the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party came to power in 2015.
Last month, the Polish government sent Germany a diplomatic note, requesting Germany about €1.3 trillion in World War II reparations.
(Aleksandra Krzysztoszek | EURACTIV.pl)
Source: euractiv.com
