Spain is trying to reach a consensus on a “solid proposal” on Catalan, Basque, and Galician with “all” EU states

Eduardo González Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares stated this Monday that the government is working with "all EU member states" to "achieve a solid proposal" that will allow the officialization of the Catalan, Basque, and Galician languages in the European institutions. At Tuesday's General Affairs Council (GAC), the Polish Presidency included "Spain's request to include Catalan, Basque, and Galician in Regulation No. 1/1958, which regulates the EU's language regime." The GAC will be held in Brussels, and Spain will be represented by the State Secretary for the European Union, Fernando Sampedro. "The item is included in the agenda for adoption," Albares declared during a joint press conference with German Foreign Minister Johann David Wadephul at the ministerial headquarters in the Viana Palace in Madrid. "We will work with all Member States and will continue working until tomorrow to include anything, any doubts they may have," Albares continued. "We have worked with several Member States on aspects where they had doubts or reservations in order to achieve a solid proposal, a well-developed and much-improved proposal, with all Member States," he added. The minister also insisted that the official status of Catalan, Basque, and Galician in the EU is "a matter of Spanish national identity" in a country defined by the Constitution as "multilingual" and where "twenty million" people reside in territories where languages other than Spanish are spoken. "I am sure, and I cannot believe it could be any other way, that all Spanish political forces are talking with their sister political forces to ensure that this national identity is recognized," he continued, indirectly referring to the Popular Party, which he has frequently criticized for not supporting the government's proposal to its European partners. For his part, Johann David Wadephul stated at the press conference that the two ministers had "spoken at length" on this issue during their meeting in Madrid and assured that he would take "this information and these arguments" with him for analysis by the Federal Government. "We will participate in the debate under the Polish Presidency, and we will have to see what Poland's proposals will be tomorrow (Tuesday)," he concluded, without further details. The process The modification of the EU's language regime requires the unanimous support of all 27 Member States. Some countries have expressed 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 (and, incidentally, 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 decisions, except for the commitment of the imminent Belgian Presidency to "advance work on Spain's application during its term." However, the issue of languages was conspicuously absent from the agenda of all the General Affairs Councils during the Belgian semester, and it did not appear even once during the subsequent Hungarian Presidency. On January 29, Albares stated that his Polish counterpart, Radoslaw Sikorski, had committed to including the issue on the agenda of the current Polish Presidency to submit it to the "decision of all EU Member States."

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