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Ladinia
When speaking about the legal protection of the Ladins, it first of all has to be underlined that the single valleys have had different treatment: the most advantaged have always been Val Badia and Val Gardena, while Livinallongo and Ampezzo were those which had to suffer most and therefore a greater assimilation incurred in those territories. Observing the historical development we can observe that the first protection of the Ladins was already given by the Italian Constitution, even if in a rather indirect form. In fact, article 6 of the Constitution sanctions that the Republic defends minorities with special norms. However, before putting this principle into practice a lot of time passed and many more norms followed to guarantee the possibility to safeguard the own language and culture to the Ladins. In the Trentino-Alto Adige region this series of norms started with the passing of the special statute in 1948. The aim of this regulation was to make the contents of an international agreement more explicit. The statute represents, in fact, an addition to the Peace Treaty of Paris which had been negotiated for a long time by the Austrian and Italian foreign ministers Karl Gruber and Alcide De Gasperi. Even if these documents represented a connection on a constitutional level for the Ladins, they had to wait twenty more years in order to put them into practice. This is especially true for the Ladins in the Trento Province. In the Bolzano Province the situation was different, several rights were granted to the Ladins of Val Badia and Val Gardena: for example the regulation by the minister of education which already in 1948 introduced the school system based on equal language teaching in German and Italian with some hours of Ladin; or article 69 of the decree by the Italian Head of State nr. 574 of 1951 with which the three linguistic groups were officially recognised or, moreover, the institution of the cultural councils for every linguistic group which can make concrete interventions in the subject matters that are foreseen by article 87, or the use of Ladin in legal proceedings and, in general, the use of Ladin in the relationships with the public educational system. The Ladins in the Bolzano Province have got the chance to use the own language with the public offices (the military forces and police excluded) which are located in the Ladin valleys and also with those offices in the province “which solve functions that are exclusively or prevailingly in the interest of the Ladin populations”, which are for example located in Bolzano.
With the second statute of autonomy (1972) the granted safeguarding norms started to differ very much between the Ladins of the Bolzano Province and those living in the Trento Province. The principle of trilingualism was introduced in Bolzano according to which every public work place can only be taken by people whose language proficiency has been assessed by a special exam of trilingualism. A regulation which grants autonomy to the Ladin schools was introduced and the school system with equal language teaching in German and Italian was started in the Ladin villages. With article 19 of the statute of autonomy the teaching of Ladin in the schools was decreed; the administrators of local corporations were given the special authority to contest the files of the public administration at the administrative court in case they offended the principle of equality between the linguistic groups; the Ladins were granted political representation in the provincial and regional governments. With article 102, the Ladins in Val di Fassa were granted the general right to valorise the teaching of Ladin language and culture, but also cultural initiatives, the press and activities of recreation, the Ladin toponyms and traditions.
In the 80s much changed for the Ladins in Val di Fassa, but the great leap forward only occurred in the 90s when several norms were drafted. Shortly before the campaigns for the regional elections in November 1993, the “commission of the twelve” passed a norm which foresaw “safeguarding dispositions for the Ladin speaking populations in the Trento Province” which the government then emitted in the December of the same year with the legislative decree of December 16th 1993, nr. 592. This decree regulates the inclusion of the declaration of linguistic belonging in case of national census and the adaptation of the public work places to the resulting proportion as it is practiced in the Bolzano Province. When a Ladin was finally given the chance to participate in the provincial as well as in the regional government, the differences between the two provinces were remarkably reduced.
If the discussion so far only focused on the situation of the Ladins in the Bolzano and Trento provinces, this has occurred because the Ladins living in Livinallongo and Ampezzo were only officially recognized in 1999 when the national law 482 came into force. Even if the region Veneto passed a law which supported the fostering and the safeguarding of the Ladin language and culture already in 1983, in these valleys only little could be done to attain these goals.