The institutions of the European Union would not be starting from scratch if, in the future, the Council unanimously agrees to include Catalan, Galician and Basque among its official languages and must incorporate them into its offer of services interpretation.
Since 2005, Spain has signed administrative agreements with all the community institutions - except the European Parliament - to allow their use in certain meetings. The experience is very limited and does not meet the political aspirations of either the Catalan Government or the acting Government of Pedro Sánchez, which has asked the EU to take a step further and recognize them as official. But the device works without problems and offers an approximation of 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 Eurochamber, which has its own resources, currently has 41 workers for the Spanish booth to ensure the interpretation of the 24 official languages of the EU into this language. Of these professionals, 10 are also able to interpret Catalan, 3 Galician, and 1 Basque, according to the figures provided by the European Commission. In addition, the general management, known internally by the acronym SCIC, regularly uses the services of 119 independent interpreters for the Spanish booth and, of these, 36 cover the Catalan language and some of them 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 regularly used by the institution. Depending on the needs of each meeting, as is done with each combination of languages required, the profile of professionals is selected. "Given that the level of demand is currently low, we have the capacity to respond to requests" for interpretation in these languages, explains a spokesman for the Commission.
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 the co-official languages) allow, for example, Catalan, Galician and Basque to be spoken in plenary sessions Committee of Regions (CDR), a prerogative that numerous regional presidents and mayors have used since 2005. The agreements foresee that the representation of Spain before the EU assumes 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 co-official languages.
Given the linguistic skills of the staff of the interpretation service in Spanish, the device can be organized without incurring additional costs, which is why the Council does not spend expenses in Spain, these sources explain. Catalonia demarcated in 2021 this system of shared representation by which the autonomous communities coordinate and take over 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 Spanish delegation.
In the Eurochamber, the most political institution of the EU, it has been impossible to agree a similar system with Spain due to the firm rejection of the European People's Party and the reluctance of the liberals, the group in which Ciutadans is active. However, the Central Government raised the request again last year and the top of the Parliament debated it at the end this month. There was no agreement but the debate is back on the table.
