The Lehendakari, Iñigo Urkullu, has put his foot on the wall before the umpteenth ruling of the judges in relation to the normalization and promotion of Basque in the Administration, after the Justice this week ruled in favor of two appeals from Vox and PP, and annul several articles of the Basque regulations on the use of the language in local institutions. The Basque leader has regretted “the lack of sensitivity” of the magistrates and has stressed that, as a consequence of the process of minoritization of Basque, this language “is not on equal terms” with Spanish.
Urkullu responded in these terms to a question from Vox in the control session, evidencing the discomfort caused by the latest rulings of Justice regarding Basque. This same week, two rulings have been made known, both on the decree that regulates the use of Basque in the Administration, although the issue comes from a long time ago. In fact, the demonstration that will take place through the streets of Bilbao on November 4 against “the judicial offensive against Basque” was called weeks ago, before these sentences were known. These are the main rulings of Justice, so far in 2023 alone, that have ended up exasperating the Lehendakari.
The last three rulings on the regulation of Basque in the Administration have to do with Law 2/2016 on Local Institutions of the Basque Country and Decree 179/2019 on the normalization of the institutional and administrative use of official languages in the local institutions of the Basque Country. .
In July, the Constitutional Court upheld an appeal by Vox and annulled article 6.2 of Law 2/2016, which stated that “the calls, agendas, motions, individual votes, proposed agreements, opinions of the informative commissions, agreements and Minutes of the bodies of local entities may be written in Basque”, although clarifying that “as long as the rights of any member of the local entity who can validly claim ignorance of Basque are not infringed”.
This measure sought to provide a legal context for the demands of municipalities located in predominantly Basque-speaking areas, which asked to operate in Basque as a measure to promote the language.
The Constitutional Court, however, considered that "it attacks the linguistic balance between the two co-official languages by conditioning the use of Spanish to the lack of knowledge of Basque."
The last two rulings of the Justice in relation to Basque have a similar context. This Tuesday it was known that the contentious-administrative Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of the Basque Country (TSJPV) partially upheld an appeal by Vox on the same regulations, annulling up to nine precepts of Decree 179/2019 that completed the Municipal Law.
The TSJPV, however, went further than the Constitutional Code and also annulled articles aimed at promoting the use of the Basque language, such as article 27, which stated that officials will address “in the first instance the citizen in Basque, and They will continue in the language in which he or she is addressed.”
On Thursday the same court, chaired by magistrate Luis Ángel Garrido, known for his confrontations with the Basque Government, upheld an appeal by the PP and annulled a new article of the same regulations.
Before the rulings directly affected the regulations on the use of Basque in municipalities, there were several rulings in relation to the request for Basque to be used by officials.
In the Autonomous Community of Euskadi, linguistic profiles in the Administration are required based on two criteria: the sociolinguistic reality of the area in which the public position will be held and the functions inherent to the position. That is, the number of positions in which knowledge of Basque will be required depends on the number of Basque speakers in the place where these functions will be carried out (Basque is not required for the same percentage of officials in Basque-speaking areas as in areas where Spanish is the main language), while the level that will be required - or not, depending on whether it is mandatory - is determined based on the functions you will perform (whether you have to write technical reports or not, for example).
According to the latest public data, 40% of positions in the Basque Administration do not require proof of any Basque profile; In around 27% a B2 level is required and in a similar percentage of positions a C1 is required.
Last May, the contentious-administrative chamber, the same one that signed the latest rulings, refused to require the B2 level of Basque from a municipal police officer in Erandio, alleging that the agent is over 45 years old and that the elderly of this age are exempt from complying with the requirements of the linguistic profiles.
Two months earlier, in March, the same court annulled a call for 34 employment positions for the Uliazpi Foundation, dependent on the Gipuzkoa Provincial Council, alleging that the requirement for 32 of them of a B-2 level was excessive. "You cannot demand this requirement from all those presented to the detriment of the right to public employment of those who do not prove said linguistic profile," said the TSJPV.
In the same month, the same court of the TSJPV ruled that it was “abusive” to demand linguistic requirements from the workers of a bus company that operates in Ondarroa.
The company's contract with the Department of Education stated that the private company's workers must have an adequate level of Basque in their relations with the administration. However, the TSJPV concluded that the same Basque language requirements cannot be asked of civil servants from workers in private companies that provide services to the public administration.
In the month of January, likewise, the same chamber of the TSJPV forced the Arkaute police academy, dependent on the Department of Security, to admit candidates for Local Police who during the public selection process did not demonstrate a B2 level of Basque. , considering that it represented “discriminatory treatment.”
Finally, also in the month of January, the contentious-administrative chamber of the TSJPV annulled, in Barakaldo, a list of technical conditions of the contract for the management of cultural services, referring to the linguistic profiles it required. The TSJPV pointed out that "it is not possible to impose the same demands on the workers of a private company as on public employees."
Last year, several rulings were also made known in relation to the requirement of Basque in the Administration. The most striking, however, was not signed by the contentious-administrative chamber but by a court in Vitoria-Gasteiz.
In that case, a judge declared void the dismissal of an interim official from the Llodio City Council for not proving the level of Basque that was required of her, alleging that this language is “very difficult.” The Municipal Council justified that the employee agreed to the position six years earlier, knowing that the requirement of knowledge of Basque could be made mandatory, due to the linguistic context of the position, and that she had been offered facilities to learn this language.
