The possible use of the Catalan language in EU institutions has fully entered the European agenda. For the first time, the Bureau of the European Parliament, the body that brings together the highest authorities, yesterday examined the possibility of using Catalan, Basque and Galician during plenary sessions.
It was a short discussion and no decisions were made, but after listening to the positions of the groups, the president of the Eurochamber, the popular Maltese Roberta Metsola, decided to instruct the secretary general of the institution to prepare a "more informed" discussion ” – it is understood that with the preparation of an administrative report on how it would be applied in practice – to address it later, several parliamentary sources explained.
The debate served to take the pulse of the decisions of the various political families. The European Socialist Group, driving the debate together with the Greens, declared in favor of the initiative and asked that the European Parliament "prepare to make a decision before the end of this year". The Greens and Unitary Left also supported addressing the issue, while the representatives of the European People's Party and the Conservatives and Reformists declared against it and from the liberal group (Renew, to which Ciutadans is affiliated) consider leaving the debate for January 2024.
The Spanish Government last year reactivated the 2005 request to conclude an administrative agreement with the European Parliament similar to the one with the Committee of the Regions, the cost of which is paid by Spain, in order to extend its use to the Chamber, but the matter had never been raised in the Bureau because, a priori, it did not have a sufficient majority to take it forward.
The trigger for yesterday's debate in Strasbourg was the Spanish Government's decision to include in the agenda of the General Affairs Council of September 19 the request to recognize the co-official languages of the State as official languages of the EU This request is more ambitious than the one from 2005 and, if it goes ahead, would place Catalan, Basque and Galician on equal footing with the club's 24 official languages. Metsola's position is that the European Parliament must "wait" for what the Council decides on September 19, so that an independent decision by the Chamber in favor of the inclusion of these languages is ruled out, since considers that there is not enough of a majority in favor of the idea.
For Ernest Urtasun (En Comú Podem) and Diana Riba (ERC), the two members of Els Verds/European Free Alliance, Metsola must put the initiative to a vote and not miss this "historic opportunity" to "promote linguistic diversity in the EU" and repair the "injustice" that the 14th most spoken language in the Union cannot be used fully in its institutions.
