The Diplomat
Spain’s European partners do not see any urgency in making the use of Catalan, Basque and Galician official in the European Union, as the Government of Pedro Sánchez intends. Yesterday, in the General Affairs Council they made it clear that to make a decision they need a legal opinion from the EU Council on the consequences of the measure and an analysis of the economic, political and practical impact it would have.
The Government sent the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, to the meeting of the General Affairs Council, which is usually attended by the ministers or secretaries of State who directly deal with European issues, because it wanted to reach an agreement of the Twenty-seven on a initiative resulting from the negotiations that Pedro Sánchez maintains with the Catalan and Basque independentists for a future investiture as head of the Government.
The Executive was aware of the reluctance that there would be in the majority of EU countries, both regarding the substance of the proposal and the rush to try to implement it, and for this reason, Spain, in addition to defending that it is something good for Europe and that it is in line with the “multilingualism objectives set out in Article 3 of the Treaties”, offered to bear the costs, something that, on the other hand, is not clear that can be made a reality, because the European regulation establishes that it must be financed by community coffers.
In an attempt to gain followers for his initiative, the Minister of Foreign Affairs offered to start with Catalan first and leave Basque and Galician for later. In this way, it was considered that the process within the EU could be accelerated and that the reservations of some countries regarding the cost of translation and intervention in the co-official languages would be overcome.
Before journalists, Albares explained this shift taken by the Government by prioritizing Catalan with the argument that it has chosen the language “whose representatives have most insistently requested” the inclusion of their language in the community framework and because of the three languages co-official is, with more than 10 million speakers, the one with the greatest presence. The minister specified that “absolutely” this is a form of discrimination for Basque and Galician.
Unrest among Sánchez’s nationalist partners
However, the PNV did not see it that way and its spokesperson in the Congress of Deputies, Aitor Esteban, warned Pedro Sánchez that this prioritization of Catalan over Basque “does not facilitate” his investiture. And he added that the promotion” of a language should not be based on the number of speakers, claiming that “if that were the case, English and Chinese would be enough in the world.” Also from EH Bildu, MEP Pernando Barrena, replied to Albares said that “the size of a language, its number of speakers, is nothing more than a pretext” and stated that “today there are three official languages with fewer speakers than Basque: Maltese, Gaelic and Luxembourgish.”
Likewise, BNG MEP Ana Miranda maintained that “there are no first and second-class languages, but rather they are all first-class.”
The truth is that, while in the Congress of Deputies in Madrid the possibility of expressing oneself in one of the co-official languages, with interpreters, was launched yesterday, in a controversial plenary session, Albares tried to extend this practice to the entire European Union. “This is not a new or unprecedented proposal, Spain has been requesting it for almost 20 years,” he insisted before journalists, later emphasizing that there are already “administrative arrangements” within the Council and the European Commission that allow the translation of many of its documents into co-official languages, although there is no equivalent regime with the European Parliament.
The Spanish arguments did not convince the majority of their European partners, who, as the Government expected, asked for more time to study the matter. There were 40 minutes of debate, in which around twenty ministers or State Secretaries took the floor to express their doubts about the need to take a measure of this type and, above all, to do it with the haste that Spain requested.
Sweden and Finland had already expressed their lack of enthusiasm for the Spanish initiative days ago and yesterday they did so again. The Swedish person in charge of European Affairs, Jessika Roswall, indicated that Sweden’s doubts fundamentally have to do with the consequences of the modification of the regulation because “there are many minority languages within the EU that are not official languages” and they want to be clear about which ones will be the “legal and financial consequences” before making any decision.
And the Minister of European Affairs of Finland, Anders Adlercreutz, stated that, despite the commitment to linguistic diversity, it is “too early” to make a decision on the recognition of Catalan, Basque and Galician as EU languages because they have not been resolved. doubts about the consequences that this decision would have.
For her part, the French State Secretary for Europe, Laurence Boone, stated: “There is a constitutional framework and a legal framework in the European Council and I think it is important for everyone to study this issue.”
“It is a proposal that really needs to be considered carefully, we want to see and have more details about the status of these languages at the national level in Spain,” said the State Secretary for European Affairs of Croatia, Andreja Metelkometelko-Zgombiczgombic, who also considered “useful” to wait to have an analysis from the Council’s legal service.
The State Secretary for European Affairs of Slovakia, Peter Misik, expressed himself in a similar way, who said he was aware that for Spain it is an “important and sensitive” issue, but considered it “premature” to talk about decision-making because there are elements “legal and practical” to explain.
For the Irish State Secretary, Peter Burke, there is no doubt that multilingualism in the European Union must be supported and steps must be taken to make languages as accessible as possible, but Dublin wants the “operational consequences” of include Catalan, Basque and Galician as official languages of the EU.
The head of Czech diplomacy, Martin Dvorak, in turn, stated that “it is necessary to discuss it in more depth” because it is an “absolutely unprecedented” proposal for which the consequences must be examined.
Given these positions, the matter was not put to a vote, despite which, Albares emphasized to journalists that “no one has expressed a veto” against the Spanish initiative and defended that a “key step along the way” has been taken. of the official status of co-official languages. Furthermore, in a message clearly addressed to Catalan independence supporters, he stressed that the Government has “fulfilled its commitments” to raise this demand for community debate.
The escaped former Catalan president and leader of Junts Per Catalunya, Carles Puigdemont, in a message on the social network ‘X’, considered it good news that there was no veto on the proposal, but he called on the Spanish Government to act more diligence “because the opportunity is now” and added that what happened yesterday in Brussels shows that “Spain is not making itself heard in Europe as much as Sánchez claimed.”
For her part, from ERC, the Government spokesperson, Patrícia Plaja, stated that if the official status of Catalan in the EU has not been achieved, it has been “because the Government has done the job late and poorly.” “Commitments are there to be fulfilled and this one has not been fulfilled at the moment,” she said.
Once it has been confirmed that the countries are demanding more details about the cost of the measure and its impact on the community budget, as well as the legal study of its impact on other European languages, it is now up to the Spanish presidency to prepare the next steps, both deriving the technical discussion to the working groups provided within the Council as well as commissioning the opinion of the institution’s jurists.
