Meeting at the EU General Affairs Council on Tuesday (May 27th) EU Member-States decided to postpone voting on EU official status for Catalan, Galician and Basque. After the meeting the Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares declared that the process of official status was now “irreversible”, despite some states showing reluctance, because so many Member-States now back the proposal following Spanish Government efforts to persuade them.
Speaking in the Spanish Parliament on Wednesday (May 28th) Foreign Minister Albares said: “The path to EU official status for our official languages is unavoidable and irreversible… We must all work together towards this goal.” Meanwhile the Spanish Government are continuing to work to persuade those states that remain reluctant to back the proposals and if successful aim for a vote at EU Council soon after that.
Speaking to the media ELEN Secretary-General Davyth Hicks said that: “We will continue to campaign for EU official status for Catalan, Galician and Basque – and its good to see a positive evolution as more States are now in support. We think its vital that the three languages achieve full working EU official status. Not only will it bring significant financial investment into each countries language industry, more importantly official status acts to boost the prestige of the language and increases usage in all sociolinguistic domains.
“Having EU official status for the three languages would break so many barriers for all of the languages and peoples that we represent in terms of increased prestige and usage. Primarily, it would break the glass ceiling where many plurilingual States only allow for one of their languages to be EU official. It would send a message of hope to all the other European minoritized languages. After years of neglect for our languages, Europe would be one step nearer to fully realizing the founding European Union Value of protecting and promoting its language diversity, and achieving some measure of linguistic justice.”
Speaking from Wales ELEN President Elin Haf Gruffydd Jones said that: “We look forward to seeing the motion on the table and for it to be passed by all EU member states unanimously. This is the right thing to do.” (Eurolang 2025)
ELEN 2023 press statement in support of EU official status for Catalan, Basque and Galician