Second splash of cold water on the possible incorporation of Catalan, Galician and Basque as official languages of the European Union. The Finnish Executive added this Friday to the doubts expressed on Wednesday by the Government of Sweden, which has also confirmed its reservations about the Spanish proposal. Helsinki believes that expanding the current list of 24 official EU languages by three new languages would entail financial and administrative burdens and there are other, simpler ways to promote minority language issues.
This was agreed this Friday by a committee dedicated to EU issues and headed by the Finnish Prime Minister, the conservative Petteri Orpo, who has warned that expanding the number of official languages can slow down decision-making at the community level and delay the entry into force of future regulations.
The Government of Finland makes it clear, in a statement, that it is in favor of promoting cultural and linguistic diversity within the EU, but points out that it does not believe that the Spanish proposal to incorporate three new languages is the best way to do so.
These are arguments similar to those defended by Sweden this Wednesday to express its reservations. European Affairs Minister Jessika Roswall said her government is “undecided” about extending the EU language regulation and wants to examine “further” what the “legal and financial” consequences of the proposal. Roswall noted that “there are many minority languages that are not official within the EU.”
The EU language regulations date back to 1958, the year in which the first meetings of the then called European Parliamentary Assembly began, the seed of the current European Parliament, with four official languages, which were those of the founding countries: Dutch, French, German and Italian.
In the following years, with the successive enlargements of the EU, official languages were added, up to the current 24. The last to join this club was Gaelic, which in 2007, with the incorporation of Ireland into the Union, obtained status as an official and restricted working language, but did not achieve full official status until last year.
The initiative to include Catalan, Basque and Galician in the regulations that regulate the community linguistic regime came from the Government of Pedro Sánchez and is part of the agreement reached by the PSOE with Junts for the constitution of the Congress Board, last 17 of August. That same day, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, made the request to the EU, in a letter in which he requested that this matter be included in the agenda of the General Affairs Council meeting next Tuesday, the 19th. September, as was done.
Spain's desire is that at that meeting on the 19th there will be a debate on the matter among all the foreign ministers or European affairs ministers that will allow the support for its proposal to be gauged. Most likely, only in that case would a vote take place.
Added to the reluctance officially expressed by the governments of Sweden and Finland, both of which are conservative, are the doubts that some partners have expressed, in the various contacts that have been maintained for weeks, regarding the cost of the measure and how it may affect other minority languages in the EU.
The Finnish Prime Minister, the conservative Petteri Orpo, elected in June of this year, governs thanks to an agreement with the far-right and two other minority parties, the Christian Democrats and the Swedish People's Party of Finland (RKP). As for the Government of the Prime Minister of Sweden, Ulf Kristersson, it is a coalition of conservatives, Christian Democrats and liberals with external support from the ultra Sweden Democrats.
