Today, the Spanish Government will once again bring to the table of the General Affairs Council of the European Union its demand for the official status of Catalan, Basque and Galician in the community institutions, a debate from which no decision is expected to emerge.
It will be the second time that the Twenty-Seven will address the issue at ministerial level, and the objective of the head of the Spanish delegation, José Manuel Albares, is to resolve the doubts previously raised by the European partners through an oral presentation of the situation. From there, the Government will refine the draft of its proposal to reform the Council regulations that govern the linguistic regime of the Union institutions.
The Government's strategy is to make clear the “specificity” of the Spanish co-official languages and to limit as much as possible the definition and conditions under which others could claim to be recognized as official by the EU, which currently has 24 official languages. Among the elements that Spain puts forward and that could be taken into account when expanding the current linguistic regime are the constitutional recognition of the language in a Member State; having made use of article 55.2 of the Lisbon Treaty that allows this document to be translated into “co-official languages”, something that only Spain and the Netherlands have done, with Frisian; or have prior administrative agreements to allow citizens to communicate with the EU there, such as those that Spain signed more than 15 years ago, diplomatic sources explain.
The new legislative draft, which will replace the proposal presented in September, will be sent to the Twenty-seven after today's council, in order to incorporate the conclusions of this second debate that will take place today, diplomatic sources explain. In parallel, the Government has requested a report from the European Commission on the financial and logistical impact that the incorporation of three more languages to those recognized as official by the Union would have.
During the previous meeting of the General Affairs Council, Albares announced that the Spanish Government is willing to bear the costs of expanding the EU's linguistic regime and, at the end of the ministerial debate, he proposed to his colleagues to give “priority” to Catalan and begin its “deployment” as an official language of the EU, ahead of Basque or Galician. The Spanish offer to cover the costs of the reform was well received by some delegations, such as the Austrian one, but it does not resolve the main reservations expressed by the European partners, of a more political or legal nature.
About half of the EU's 27 member states have expressed doubts about the Spanish request and want more information. Germany and France have adopted an open attitude towards the request, even evoking their desire to “help” Pedro Sánchez, but from other countries, in some cases governed by conservative parties, there is reluctance to make a la carte decisions that could have a direct impact on national political debates. There is also, in general, a certain anguish regarding the linguistic implications that the next enlargement will have.
Until now, the Spanish Government has opted to maintain the discussion at a political level and only plans to take it to a technical level when it has a solid document from a legal but also a political point of view, so that it does not raise suspicions in any country. The eastern partners, for example, do not want anything that could encourage the recognition of their Russian-speaking minorities. It will be this text that, eventually, can be submitted to the examination of the Council's legal services, as France and other countries have requested as a prior step to any decision.
