<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The Polish Presidency of the EU Council has introduced the debate on the officialization of Catalan, Basque, and Galician in the European institutions at the next General Affairs Council (GAC), which will take place on Tuesday, May 27.</strong></h4> The last item on the GAC agenda, to be held in Brussels, states that "The Council will discuss Spain's request to include Catalan, Basque, and Galician in Regulation No. 1/1958, which regulates the EU's language regime." In this regard, Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares told the press this Tuesday in Brussels, before meeting with his EU counterparts, that this issue is being considered, "at Spain's request, for adoption by the General Affairs Council." He also assured that Spain is "working with all delegations" to achieve "unanimity" among "all Member States" in favor of the proposal. On January 29, José Manuel Albares stated that his Polish counterpart, Radoslaw Sikorski, had committed to including the issue of the official status of Catalan, Basque, and Galician in the European institutions on the agenda of the current Polish Presidency. Spain's intention is to submit this issue to the "decision of all EU Member States" during the Polish Presidency, and Sikorski has pledged to "help in every way possible, putting this issue on their agenda," Albares stated that day during a joint press conference in Warsaw. A week later, Albares addressed the issue of languages with the Danish Minister of European Affairs, Marie Bjerre, whose country will hold the Presidency of the EU Council starting July 1. The modification of the EU's language regime requires the unanimous support of all 27 Member States. Some countries have expressed their hesitation, and even outright opposition, for practical reasons (its economic cost and the difficulty of finding sufficient staff) and its potential impact on other Member States with minority languages. To convince the most reluctant partners, Spain has relied on the "exceptional nature" and "specificity of the Spanish case," which cannot be extrapolated to other cases, and has agreed to assume the costs. The officialization of Catalan, Basque, and Galician within the European Union was one of the commitments made by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and the Catalan pro-independence Junts to secure their support in the investiture vote. For this reason, the government took advantage of Spain's last Presidency of the EU Council (second half of 2023) to introduce the issue in four consecutive meetings of the General Affairs Council (September 19, October 24, November 15, and December 12, 2023), two of which were attended by Albares himself, a rare occurrence 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 "advance work on Spain's application during its mandate." However, the issue of languages was conspicuously absent from the agenda of all the General Affairs Councils during the Belgian semester. The topic also did not appear even once on the Council's agenda during the subsequent Hungarian Presidency.
