Compromise in the "Ortstafelstreit"

Policy Response DateApril 26, 2011 Country: Austria Address: Klagenfurt General Type: Discrimination, Institutional discrimination Racism and discrimination phenomena: Inter-ethnic
Groups affected / Interested in: Ethnic minorities Key socio-economic/institutional areas: Political discourse -parties - orgs, Anti-discrimination

On April 26th, 2011, an agreement was reached in the long-lasting “Ortstafelstreit”, the conflict on the use of bilingual topographic signs in the federal province of Carinthia. Until that day, Carinthia had refused to execute the decision of the Constitutional Court of December 13th, 2001 requiring topographical signs to be bilingual in areas where Slovene speakers have a higher share than ten per cent in the overall population. The governor of Carinthia, the state secretary and representatives of the Slovenian community signed a memorandum stipulating the setting up of 164 bilingual topographic signs.

Source: http://derstandard.at/1303291579241/Letzte-Kaerntner-Huerde-vor-den-Ortstafeln (2011-10-06), http://escholarship.org/uc/item/9vv4c23p#page-12 (2011-10-06), http://news.orf.at/stories/2051016/2050930/ (2011-10-04), http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ortstafelstreit (2011-10-06), http://www.ktn.gv.at/216471_DE%2dDokumente%2dortstafeln.pdf (2011-10-06)..