ELEN has issued a formal statement at the UN Forum for Minority Issues in Geneva calling on the EU to take action to protect European minoritized and endangered languages, something that the EU is required to do under Article 2 of the Lisbon Treaty.
The statement, presented by the ELEN President Elin Haf Gruffydd Jones, stated that: “In Europe, the EU proclaims in Article 2 of the Treaty of the European Union that, “The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities.
“But where is this respect for minorities in particular language minorities? Where are these rights? There are none.
“The rights of minorities have a foundational value on which the EU and its Member-States’ polities have to be built. How can they be absent?
“We therefore expect the EU and its Member-States to live up to this constitutional commitment and to consider language minority rights as foundational to European societies.
“We call on the EU to launch negotiations with ELEN to implement our strategy to achieve long overdue protection measures for our languages, and clear, unambiguous rights for European minoritized and endangered language speakers.”
The statement follows ELEN’s highly successful General Assembly in Barcelona where the organisation’s revamped strategy aimed at getting the EU to bring forward long overdue measures to protect European minoritized languages was discussed.
ELEN statement video
ELEN OS UN FMI 2025 call on EU