EDITORIAL

As we announced in Mercator-Linguistic Rights and Legislation’s previous Bulletin, the current year has revealed the relevance that linguistic issues have in some EU-member states, precisely in Ireland and Finland, as well as how their historical interest is reproduced in their legislation. Thus, while our last Bulletin issue contained the new Ireland’s Official Languages Act, in the current issue we publish Finland’s Language Act (no. 243/2003). By means of the prevailing language act, in force since 1922 and until 31 December 2003, Finland has showed a big interest not to marginalise linguistic rights, especially on the basis of an existing constitutional provision and due to the fact that both Swedish and Finnish are state national languages. The new legal framework will update the 1922 law insofar as it only affects the languages defined as national languages by the Constitution, while the use of Sami shall be regulated by a separate law (according to Section 8), which is currently under revision and should also enter into force on 1 January 2004. As for the right to use other languages, it is also foreseen in the act by making reference to the current legislation on court proceedings, administrative proceedings and administrative judicial procedure, education, health care and social welfare and on other administrative sectors. Furthermore, we also publish the first Language Act development law: in this case it is a law on the knowledge of languages required of personnel in public bodies.

Last, and besides the usual Bibliography and Links sections of our Bulletin, our International Framework section features the first recommendation by the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers within the framework of the 2nd cycle of the monitoring mechanism on the application of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In this case, in Norway. The few recommendations issued are mainly concerned with the need to widen the promotion of the Sami varieties spoken in this Nordic country and to find a solution for the situation of the Kven/Finnish language.

We hope to meet you again in 2004, the year of the long-awaited European Union enlargement, when high-level political decisions will most likely be taken, which in some way or another will have important repercussions for the future of the so-called minority languages. And, finally, the Mercator team in Barcelona would like to wish you a happy new year 2004.