Eduardo González-The Diplomat/Julio García-Aquí Europa
The last General Affairs Council (GAC) of the Spanish Presidency of the EU yesterday resolved the Spanish proposal on the official use of Catalan, Basque and Galician in the Union without any concrete decision and with the commitment of the next Belgian Presidency “to take work forward on Spain’s request during its term of office”.
The Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU had its last chance yesterday to include in the agenda of the GAC the debate on languages. In any case, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is headed by José Manuel Albares, decided before the meeting that no vote on this issue would take place in the Council. In fact, the State Secretary for the EU, Pascual Navarro, stated on his arrival at the GAC that in yesterday’s meeting there would be a new debate on the work carried out so far on the proposal of the Spanish Presidency of the EU for the revision of the language regime of the Council and the rest of the institutions, but he did not make any allusion to any possible vote.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has already announced that it is holding talks with the future Belgian Presidency of the EU so that the official status of these three languages in the EU will continue to be addressed as from next year. In fact, this is one of the few points on which the Government of Pedro Sánchez has taken something clean out of yesterday’s meeting.
As reported by the GAC at the end of the meeting, the member countries had “an exchange of views on Spain’s request” and, during the debate, “a representative of the Spanish delegation pointed out that, on December 11, 2023, José Manuel Albares, Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, sent a letter to all the delegations in which he explained the elements that make the Spanish case unique”. As Albares explained at various times to the press, the proposed reform is limited “exclusively to the case of Spain”, taking into account “the specificity of Spain due to the series of conditions that Catalan, Basque and Galician meet and that make them a unique case in the EU”, and, therefore, “other languages will not be able to benefit from this reform if the Member State does not wish to do so”.
Likewise, the GAC recalled that “this has been the fourth time that ministers have addressed the issue, following previous discussions on Spain’s request at the General Affairs Council meetings of September 19, October 24 and November 15, 2023.” Furthermore, he continued, “the Commission referred to its preliminary estimate of the cost implications of Spain’s application, circulated on 6 December 2023”, and “the incoming Belgian presidency expressed its readiness to take work forward on Spain’s request during its term of office “.
The aforementioned preliminary report by the Secretariat General of the European Commission -which was part of the information that the Government of Sanchez presented to its partners in the GAC- has estimated the cost of the officialization of Catalan, Basque and Galician in the Community institutions at 132 million euros.
The study is based on the financial estimate made by the European Commission in 2005 for the inclusion of Gaelic in the system of official languages in the EU, at the request of Ireland (a measure that was finally implemented in 2007). At that time, €37 million was estimated for each language, but the figure has risen to €44 million (€132 million in the case of three languages) by annual inflation indexation to the present day. However, the Brussels report makes it clear that this is a preliminary estimate and that, once the EU Council formally accepts the proposal, a firm proposal would have to be drawn up, which would take about six months to complete.
For his part, the former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont has stated, through the X network, that “during the Spanish presidency of the Council of the European Union the official status of the Catalan language will not be approved”. “It is a breach of what we had been told would be possible,” he continued. The official status of Catalan in the EU (and, by extension, of Basque and Galician) was part of Pedro Sánchez’s investiture negotiations with the Catalan pro-independence Junts. The investiture debate took place on November 15 and 16 and resulted in the renewal of Pedro Sánchez as President of the Government. At the end of October, Albares declared to the press that “the Government has fulfilled the agreement to take this matter to the General Affairs Council”, but “the times of Europe are not the times of national politics”.
