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Issues of Bilingual Topography in Carinthia

Article 7 of the Austrian State Treaty from 1955 stipulates that bilingual topographic signs must be erected in the administrative and court jurisdictional districts of Carinthia with Slovene or mixed populations.

In the first 17 years after the entry into force of the State
Treaty, no bilingual signpost was put up in Austria. Finally in 1972, the signposts were erected for a quarter of the places in the bilingual territory, but they were ripped down overnight in an organised action taken by the German
nationalist circles (the so-called »Ortstafelsturm« or Attack on the Signs).

The Government bent under the pressure exerted by the same circles and introduced a 25% clause for bilingual signposts into its 1976 ethnic minorities law, while the related decree stipulated that the bilingual signposts should be put up only in the places with more than 60% of the Slovene-speaking minority according to the results of the last population census.

In 2001, the Austrian Constitutional Court laid down in its ruling that the bilingual topography and the 25% clause in the ethnic minorities law were unconstitutional. The Constitutional Court ruling stipulated that bilingual signs should be set up in Carinthia where at least 10% of the population was Slovene over a lengthy period of time. In 2005, the Austrian Constitutional Court repeated and reinforced such judicature.

In spite of the clear rulings passed by the Constitutional Court, the Federal Government and more particularly the Carinthian authorities have not yet put up any additional bilingual signposts. On the con­trary, the Carinthian provincial governor Haider has launched an offensive not only against the Slovene ethnic minority in Carinthia but also against the Constitutional Court as an institution.

Rather than allow the erection of the bilingual signposts he has moved the monolingual signposts in the affected towns by a few metres, which in the legal sense means that a new procedure will have to be initiated all the way to the Constitutional Court. And for the fifth consecutive year, the Austrian Federal Government has allowed him to make a mockery of the provisions of the Austrian constitution, the Constitutional Court and the Slovene national minority.