The State Attorney's Office approved in a report dated August 16 that the Central Government, through its Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, requested the Council of the European Union to incorporate Catalan, Galician and Basque in the linguistic regime of the Union; that is, to endow them with the category of official and working languages.
One day after having the endorsement of the legal services of the State, the minister sent a letter in which he requested that "the modification procedures provided for in the Council" begin and that the matter be included in the agenda of the next meeting of the General Affairs Council (CAG), which was held this Tuesday in Brussels. This request was framed within the commitment acquired by the central government with the pro-independence parties in the face of the pact to make the socialist Francina Armengol president of the Congress Bureau.
According to the report, which La Vanguardia has had access to, the Executive acted after the state attorney general, Consuelo Castro, approved this claim. The text analyzes three points: whether the Council of the EU can incorporate new languages; whether the Central Government can make this claim, being in office, and whether it was the responsibility of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to make the formal request.
In all three cases, the State Attorney's Office gave the green light. Regarding the first aspect, Castro explains that the Treaty establishing the European Community foresees that it is the Council of the EU that sets the linguistic regime of the and that this regime can be modified in consideration of the "linguistic diversity of the member states, with the only limitation that the decision of the Council is adopted unanimously".
Castro recalls the example of Ireland, which in 2005 requested the incorporation of Gaelic as an official and working language of the European institutions, which was authorized that same year. "The Council has full capacity to introduce, fix and modify, by unanimity, the linguistic regime of the institutions and to establish divergent linguistic regimes, either as a result of the accession of new states, or at the request of a full Member State right", reads the text. For Castro, this criterion is "consistent" with "respect for linguistic diversity configured as a constant in European Union law".
The second point, about the capacity to intervene of a government in office, is also saved by Castro, who relies on jurisprudence to warn that these are ordinary affairs.
According to the Attorney General of the State, "the concept of ordinary office of public affairs" is not that which does not involve political evaluations or does not imply the exercise of discretion, "but that which results in acts that do not involve the establishment of new political orientations nor do they mean conditioning, commitment or impediment by which it is necessary to fix the new government".
In his opinion, the mere presentation of the request to include the three languages in the linguistic regime of the Union does not mean that it must be effective but that it must be accepted by the Council unanimously and, therefore, does not entail a "commitment irreversible political".
Finally, the head of the State's legal services considers that the proposal by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is well thought out because it is the one that is legally responsible for the execution of the State's foreign policy.
Albares himself defended the use of Catalan, Basque and Galician before the EU on Tuesday because they are not minority languages and because it is a demand that Spain has been defending since 2005. It is now pending that the Council of the European Union takes a decision.
