January 2006

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THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT PREVENTS MP FROM USING CATALAN

January 2006 – Manuel Antonio dos Santos, vice-president of the European Parliament, prevented Catalan MP Bernat Joan from speaking in Catalan in the last plenary session. Addressing the assembly in his language has been his usual way to protest against the exclusion of non-state languages in the legislative body, and Joan has been reprimanded several times for contravening the in-house language regulations. On this occasion, though, the controversy with the vice-president was particularly significant as the board of the Parliament had postponed two days before and for the third time the decision on the proposal regarding the use of Catalan, Galician and Basque in this European institution.

As we informed last month, the Spanish minister for foreign affairs and co-operation, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, sent a proposal to reach an agreement with the European Parliament regarding the manner in which letters from citizens written in those languages could be received and send out and the way oral interventions in the plenary sessions could be organized. The European Parliament’s ok was expected before the end of last year, but a reply remains to be given. Monday this week the members of the board addressed the issue again, but the proposal was postponed once more.

It seems that the adjournment is due to the contents of a report drafted by the Parliament secretariat, which highlights the technical difficulties the inclusion of Catalan, Galician and Basque would involve after the addition of 9 languages following the EU enlargement. It also underlines that the use of the co-official languages of Spain in the European Parliament would be an unsustainable precedent since other states could eventually apply for the same rights.

Bernat Joan disagrees with the official version the report provides, and believes that the actual reason is the lack of political will to implement language rights. According to him, “it would just require from the deputies a translation for the interpreters of the speech in a bridge language”.