Foreign Ministry assures that Albares and Sikorski have made progress on the proposal on languages

Eduardo González The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, took advantage of his participation in the EU Foreign Affairs Council (FAC) in Brussels on Monday to discuss with his Polish colleague, Radosław Sikorski, the Spanish proposal to make official the use of Catalan, Galician and Basque in the European institutions, just two weeks before the start of the Polish presidency of the EU Council. “I will take advantage of this Foreign Affairs Council to speak with my Polish colleague about the letter I sent him last week so that in this Polish presidency, as with previous presidencies since the Spanish presidency, the issue of Catalan and official languages, their official status in the EU Council, is addressed,” Albares declared to the press upon his arrival at the Council. Specifically, the minister was referring to the letter sent last week to Sikorski in which he was asked that the next Polish presidency of the EU Council take up the Spanish proposal. That letter, as Albares explained on Monday, included “the memorandum that Spain presented on the conditions under which and how this official status would be achieved.” Therefore, the bilateral meeting on Monday, he explained, was an “opportunity to once again convey Spain’s request to him as well as to explain in more detail the content of the memorandum and the fact that there are many millions of Spanish citizens who use the co-official languages, which are part of the Spanish national identity.” “It is not a political issue, in the sense of being politicized, but rather it is an issue of national identity, a truly matter of the Spanish State and Constitution,” he added. According to Efe news agency and confirmed by diplomatic sources to The Diplomat, during their bilateral meeting, Albares and Sikorski agreed to “take a further step” in this proposal through a forthcoming meeting of their respective EU Secretaries of State to address this issue. José Manuel Albares himself made the same efforts in the last week of June with his Hungarian counterpart, Péter Szijjártó, a few days before the start of the current Hungarian Presidency of the EU Council. Hungary’s ambassador to the EU, Bálint Ódor, declared around the same time that, in principle, his country had no intention of discussing Spain’s proposal during its Presidency, a warning that was later confirmed. The issue did not appear on the Council’s agenda even once during the Hungarian presidency. The modification of the European language regime to make Catalan, along with Basque and Galician, official within the European Union was one of the commitments between the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the Catalan separatists of Junts to obtain their support in the investiture vote. For this reason, the Government took advantage of the last Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU (second half of 2023) to introduce the issue in four consecutive meetings of the General Affairs Council (19 September, 24 October, 15 November and 12 December 2023), in two of which even Albares appeared, something unusual in this type of meeting. Despite this insistence, the four meetings concluded without any concrete decision, except for the commitment of the imminent Belgian Presidency to “move forward the work on Spain’s request during its mandate”. However, the question of languages was conspicuous by its absence from the agenda of all the General Affairs Councils of the Belgian semester. The modification of the linguistic regime of the EU requires the unanimous support of the 27 member states. Some countries have expressed doubts, and even open opposition, for practical reasons (its economic cost and the problems of finding sufficient staff) and for its possible impact on other Member States with minority languages. To convince the most reticent partners, Spain has relied on the “exceptionality” and “specificity of the Spanish case”, which cannot be extrapolated to other cases, and has committed to assuming the costs.

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