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Linguistic rights

Italy
The Italian Constitution does not mention Italian as the official language of the State. However, both the Statute of Trentino-Alto Adige, which has the value of Constitutional Law, and the ordinary law no.482/1999 explicitly refer to Italian as the official language of the State. Further recognitions can be found in art. 122 of the Code of Civil Procedure and in art. 109 the Code of Criminal Procedure.

Minority languages are protected by the Constitution in art. 6 and the State has commited to their preservation. Some of these, such as Albanian, Catalan, German, Greek, Slovene, Croatian, French, Franco-Provençal, Friulian, Ladin, Occitan and Sardinian, are officially recognized and included in the ordinary law no. 482/1999, Art. 2, comma 1. These are further protected by the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, signed and ratified by Italy in 1997, which applies to all the groups mentioned in the 1999 national law, with the addition of the Romani.

Regional legislations have assured supplementary recognition for local idioms. Whereas in the cases of Trentino-South Tyrol and Aosta Valley, these minority languages (German and French respectively) are treated as equivalent, and thus co-official, of Italian and officially used in public offices and administrative documents, in other cases they are merely recognized or "promoted", as in the examples of Veneto and Sicily. The teaching and learning of these minority languages is ensured from the first levels of the Italian educational system until the high school in the areas in which these languages are spoken (Law no. 482/1999, Art. 4, comma 1).

Italy is also a signatory of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, but it has not yet ratified it. Therefore its provisions protecting regional languages do not apply in the country.