Foreign Affairs hopes that no country will veto this Tuesday the elevation of Catalan, Basque and Galician to official EU languages

The Spanish Government trusts that none of the community partners will veto this Tuesday the proposal to convert Catalan, Basque and Galician into official EU languages ​​and that the file can move forward, according to diplomatic sources. It is not expected, however, that the proposal will be approved at the meeting scheduled in Brussels, for which the unanimity of the Twenty-Seven is required, since several countries have expressed doubts about the financial, legal, administrative and even operational implications of the measure. .

The elevation of Catalan, Basque and Galician to the category of official languages ​​of the EU was one of the conditions that the two Catalan independence groups, Junts per Catalunya (JuntsxCat) and Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), set to support the election of the socialist Francina Armengol as president of Congress, on August 17, and has now become the touchstone of the PSOE’s will to comply with the agreements it reaches in view of the investiture of Pedro Sánchez.

On the same day 17, before the vote, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Alberes, sent a letter to the Presidency of the Council of the EU in which he requested the start of the procedure to incorporate these languages ​​into Regulation 1/1958, which sets the linguistic regime of the European institutions. Furthermore, he requested that this item be included in the agenda of the first meeting of the General Affairs Council, scheduled for this Tuesday.

The minister, according to diplomatic sources, will present the proposal to his colleagues and will try to clear up the many doubts it has raised, emphasizing that Spain will be responsible for the cost of the translations, for which no estimate has been made.

The sources consulted admit that the proposal will most likely not be approved this Tuesday, but they emphasize that the important thing is that no partner vetoes it and can continue its processing. “You don’t have to count the votes, but the vetoes,” they emphasize. The fact that Spain presides over the Council of the EU during this semester and Minister Albares is in charge of leading the debate expands its room for maneuver.

In Foreign Affairs they do not want to set a deadline for final approval. Although the Government has stepped on the accelerator, diplomatic sources emphasize that “issues of this magnitude are never approved on the first try” and require a period of maturation. They remember that the last time a language was elevated to the status of official language, Gaelic in 2007, the process lasted two years, despite the fact that it had appeared in the EU treaty since Ireland joined in 1973.

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Now the problem is more difficult because, for the first time, it is proposed to convert languages ​​that are not official languages ​​​​in the entire territory of a member country into official EU languages ​​and that could open the door to the around 60 minority languages ​​that are spoken. in the Twenty-seven, greatly expanding the list of 24 official languages ​​of the European institutions.

Finland and Sweden, publicly, and other countries secretly, have expressed fear that the measure will increase bureaucratic burden and slow down the implementation of EU decisions. To try to dispel objections, the document presented by the Spanish representation before the EU recalls that the 2007 Treaty of Lisbon already recognized the right of States to make official translations of it into the languages ​​they determined and that Spain did so into Catalan, Basque and Galician, according to La Vanguardia. This fact follows the failed attempt in 2004, when the Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero tried to make the three aforementioned languages ​​official in the EU and was left halfway, with administrative, but not legal, status.

Although Foreign Affairs claims to have no doubts about the fit of the decision, it “understands” that other countries want to request legal reports from the Council services, as they have already hinted.

Unanimity

European sources indicate that the Spanish proposal will be subject to the same rules as other initiatives that require unanimity, such as sanctions against Russia, whose discussions sometimes lasted weeks and even months. “We work until it enjoys unanimity, and then it is formally approved,” they have indicated, implying that the initiative is only in its first steps. As other diplomatic sources have corroborated, although the partners are not opposed to examining the matter, the idea is in no case to immediately submit it to a vote that is not ripe, since multiple legal, practical and political doubts continue to persist, more beyond the costs that Spain is willing to assume.

Meanwhile, the platforms for the linguistic normalization of Catalan, Basque and Galician have urged the EU to take advantage of this “historic opportunity” to demonstrate the commitment of the Twenty-seven to diversity and respect for linguistic rights which, they emphasize, are “human rights”.

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