ELEN was at the EESC – European Economic and Social Committee Civil Society Week in March, which featured four days of discussions and presentations on how we better develop effective working relations between European civil society organisations and the EU institutions.
ELEN was represented by Secretary-General Davyth Hicks, and Vice-Presidents Elena Jiménez (Òmnium Cultural) and Marga Payola (Plataforma per la Llengua), who exhibited material from their organisations on the ELEN infostand.
While the week was a good opportunity to highlight to the EESC, EU Commission and MEPs, the continuing lack of EU support and measures to protect and promote our languages, it was also welcome to hear about new developments from EU Justice and Consumers for a new civil society platform to ensure ongoing structured dialogue between the EU and CSOs.
In the debates ELEN proposed that there be a dedicated civil society platform for minoritised, endangered and indigenous European languages, following the model of the successful 2009-2011 EU civil society platform for multilingualism. In addition, ELEN proposed that the EU support the creation of a long term EU Framework Strategy for European minoritised and endangered languages to address that would address long term systemic issues such as discrimination, and the need for long-term support for immersion education.