The recognition of Catalan, Galician and Basque as official languages of the institutions of the European Union would cost around 132 million euros per year, about 44 million for each additional language that is incorporated into the current community linguistic regime. This is the official estimate made by the European Commission in the report sent to the Spanish Government, which had asked the institution to carry out a study of the economic and logistical impact of expanding the number of official languages from 24 to 27. The document, to which La Vanguardia has had access, has been sent to the Permanent Representations of the member states in Brussels in view of the debate on the Spanish request that will take place at the General Affairs Council next Tuesday.
The figures from the European Commission's "preliminary analysis" are based on experience with Gaelic, recognized as an official language of the EU in 2005 and which has taken more than 15 years to reach the level of "full regime" of official status in the institutions since work has been done with derogations and transitional periods. There are differences (the Irish language is spoken by 1.8 million people, while Catalan has about 10 million speakers in Spain and Galician, with around 3 million) but this is the only recent experience comparable to what would mean incorporating three new languages into the EU linguistic regime, such as the translation of all legislation and all official documents, including European competition exams, for example, into Catalan, Galician and Basque, languages to which there would be interpretation in many meetings of their institutions.
"To arrive at a more precise estimate of the cost of adding Basque, Catalan and Galician to Regulation 1 of 1958, several factors should be taken into account," explains the European Commission in its letter to the Spanish Government. Firstly, the availability of interpreters and translators as well as the training of new professionals, an aspect that posed problems in the case of Gaelic. "The availability of terminology databases and data banks to feed automatic translation systems" must also be assessed, since if they do not exist it will be necessary to invest in these systems.
Thirdly, Brussels points out, it would also be necessary to consider the entry into force "in phases" to build the necessary capacities to be able to function in the new languages (organization of competitions, hiring of personnel, possibility of launching external competitions...) until that it is possible to work in "full regime". This transitional approach "would reduce part of the costs" of the introduction of new languages, as has happened with Gaelic, recalls the deputy secretary general of the community executive, John Watson, signatory of the letter, who estimates that the institution will need about six months to make a more precise estimate of the economic impact of the Spanish proposal once it is determined with what transitional deadlines it would be applied.
Among the arguments used by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, to obtain the support of his European counterparts for the Spanish request is the commitment that Spain will bear the costs involved in the reform of the community linguistic regime. This promise has been positively valued by several delegations but many of the questions raised affect the operational and logistical impact it would have, since it is feared that having to translate community legislation into three more languages could slow down the entry into force of the new directives and regulations. . After the first ministerial debate, in September, Albares suggested that the Government was open to prioritizing the deployment of Catalan, a language in which 25% of EU translators are capable of working, according to data collected by La Vanguardia.
The matter is back on the agenda for next Tuesday's General Affairs Council meeting and, to the surprise of many delegations, it is back as an item "for vote." The Spanish Government has not yet decided whether it will ask for a vote (a risky bet, no matter how much certain sectors of the Catalan independence movement insist on it, because the reform can only be approved unanimously and a rejection now would seriously harm the proposal) but Diplomatic sources from different countries have expressed their discontent with this approach. Although they already have the impact report of the European Commission in their hands, the matter has not yet been debated in the Council's working groups nor has it passed through the table of the institution's legal service, as France and other countries have requested.
