Styria is different
Article 7 of the State Treaty mentions particularly the rights of the ethnic group Styrian Slovenes. Their existence was finally accepted and recognized, at least in Vienna, with a “delay” of many decades, by the act of accepting a representative to the Ethnic Groups Advisory Council. Styria lags far behind in the implementation of the specifically mentioned rights. After decades of assimilation and despite an increasing number of pupils in the south Styrian border areas registering for Slovene as an elective subject, it is still not possible for teachers to get certification in Slovene in Styria. The graduates of Slovene Studies at the university in Graz still have to go to Klagenfurt for their compulsory teaching practicum (in Slovene schools).
Styria is indeed different. Even suiperficial research reveals very little of the 2200 acknowledged Slovenes (census of 2001) and the hundreds of Slovene pupils. “Slovene consciousness” functions on the private level, in pubs, in singing clubs, in the many corss-border initiatives and it lives on very self-confidently and well-imbedded in the socio-cultural and psycho-social aspects of the area, without much attention.
Cultural signs with the historical place names
in southern Styria would have, in addition to a tourist
value (models in France, Ireland, etc.) an original public written form of the Slavic, a symbolically manifested and
de-nationalizing character.
The always well-equipped economic sector operating with a southeast-strategy has long solved the unsolvable promises of the law: At the chain grocery store Hofer in the meantime, one can buy Chinese sweet-and-sour soup, and hundreds of other products, with German and Slovene texts, and this - in cross-border logistics - in both Styria and Slovenia.