August 2004

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EU OFFICIAL STATUS FOR WELSH REQUESTED

August 2004 — The Welsh national party Plaid Cymru requests now an official status for Welsh within the European Union. This party urges now the British Foreign Minister Jack Straw to give Welsh official Treaty language status. With this status the European Constitutional Treaty should be published in Welsh as an authentic version and the right of petition could be done in Welsh. Members of this Welsh party have already started a campaign to make the British Foreign Minister support the language in Europe before the referendum on the European constitution takes place in 2005. In accordance with the press release published by Plaid Cymru "with Ireland and now Spain pursuing this, then Jack Straw really has no excuse whatever not to fight for Welsh to be given official status in Europe." The debate on which languages can be used in meetings of the European institutions has recently been reopened when Ireland's Prime Minister announced his government would be requesting for the official status for the Irish language. Moreover, the Spanish government has announced that as part of the same negotiations they would seek official recognition for the Catalan, Basque and Galician languages. All these claims could change the final agreement made upon the Inter-Governmental Conference (IGC) of 17-18 June (see previous news of Mercator-Legislation).