The institutions of the European Union would not be starting from scratch if, in the future, the Council unanimously agreed to include Catalan, Galician and Basque among their official languages and had to incorporate them into their offer of interpretation services.
Since 2005, Spain has signed administrative agreements with all community institutions – except the European Parliament – to allow its use in certain meetings. The experience is very limited and does not meet the political aspirations of either the Government or the acting Government of Pedro Sánchez, who has asked the EU to go one step further and recognize them as official. But the device works without problems and offers an insight into the inner workings of interpretation services in Brussels, a city where the gesture of putting on headphones to participate in a meeting or debate is absolutely normal.
The General Directorate of Interpretation of the European Commission, which offers its services to all EU institutions except the European Parliament, which has its own resources, currently has 41 employees for the Spanish booth to ensure interpretation of the 24 languages EU officials into this language. Of these professionals, ten are also capable of interpreting Catalan, three Galician and one Basque, according to figures provided by the European Commission. In addition, the general management, known internally by the acronym SCIC, regularly uses the services of 119 freelance interpreters for the Spanish booth and, of these, 36 cover the Catalan language, and several of them cover Galician and Basque.
Thus, the percentage of interpreters capable of translating foreign languages into Catalan is therefore around 25% in the internal services of the European Commission and exceeds 30% in the pool of interpreters that the institution regularly uses. Depending on the needs of each meeting, as is done with each required language combination, the profile of professionals used is selected. “Given that the level of demand is currently low, we have the capacity to respond to requests” for interpretation into these languages, explains a Commission spokesperson.
The administrative agreements signed by Spain with the community institutions almost two decades ago (it was plan B when the EU closed the door to the recognition of co-official languages) allow, for example, Catalan, Galician and Basque to be spoken in the plenary sessions of the Committee of Regions (CDR), a prerogative that numerous regional presidents and mayors have used since 2005. The agreements provide for the representation of Spain before the EU to assume the costs, and last year it paid around 15,000 euros to the CDR for these services.
In the Council, on the other hand, it is being done at zero cost, explain Spanish diplomatic sources. The agreements allow that when the minister on duty participates in a Council that affects policies that are transferred to the autonomous communities (Agriculture and Fisheries, Health, Education, Consumption and Environment), the regional councilor who accompanies him can express himself in the languages co-officials.
Given the linguistic skills of the staff of the Spanish interpretation service, the device can be organized without incurring additional costs, hence the Council does not pass on expenses to Spain, explain the aforementioned sources. In 2021, Catalonia distanced itself from this system of shared representation by which the autonomous communities coordinate and replace each other every six months, but the Galician, Valencian, Balearic and Basque councilors have continued to make use of this right when they are part of the delegation. Spanish.
In the European Parliament, the most political institution in the EU, it has been impossible to agree on a similar system with Spain due to the firm rejection of the European People's Party and the reluctance of the Liberals, the group where Ciudadanos is active. However, the Government raised the request again last year and the leadership of Parliament finally debated it this month. There was no agreement, but the debate is back on the table.
