The official status of Catalan, Galician and Basque in the European Union will not be debated during the next General Affairs Council, scheduled for January 29, and will be discussed only at a technical level. This was reported this Friday by the newspaper Ara and confirmed by the ACN agency through diplomatic sources.
According to voices from the Council of the European Union, the Belgian presidency – which took over from Spain – is waiting for an alternative proposal on officialdom that is “compatible with the treaties.” In this sense, he requests that the Spanish proposal be accompanied by an analysis of the administrative, legal and financial impact and points out that it “will still take time to be published.”
Since Spain assumed the presidency of the Council, the Spanish government included the issue of Catalan in four debates in the European semester. Despite the progress that was made -Albares presented an adapted proposal and the European Commission presented a preliminary report on costs-, none of the debates among the 27 concluded with a final vote.
Despite not closing the official status of the co-official languages ??during the second half of 2023, Spain highlighted in the last General Affairs Council – held in Brussels on December 12 – Belgium’s “will to continue promoting the measure. In a wheel press release, the Secretary of State for the European Union of the Spanish government, Pascual Navarro, was confident that the work would progress “rapidly” to find a “legally acceptable” solution that would arrive “as soon as possible.”
In order for the official status of Catalan to move forward, the delegations of the European Union are talking about the preparation of two reports, both still in the process of preparation. On the one hand, that of the Council’s legal services, which must evaluate whether the proposed modification complies with EU law.
The other refers to the European Commission, which must study the impact of operation. Although the community executive presented a preliminary document last December – it estimated the cost of making Catalan, Basque and Galician official at 132 million euros per year -, sources from the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Generalitat consider that this “does not can be considered the definitive report.” In fact, the Commission indicated that the estimate was made based on calculations carried out in 2015 by the Gaelic and that other factors would have to be taken into account to be “more careful.” “We consider it a first assessment, because many states have asked for more about the general impact, beyond the costs,” they indicate from Exteriors.
All of this occurs in parallel with the works being carried out in the Congress of Deputies to facilitate the progressive implementation of the right to use and understand official languages ??in the Lower House, which, as it became known this Friday, are making good progress. rhythm so that, for this period of sessions, the necessary means will be established for simultaneous translation in up to three committee rooms at the same time.
Both the official status of Catalan, Basque and Galician in the European institutions and in the Congress of Deputies was a commitment of the PSOE with Junts and ERC to take over the presidency and control of the Lower House Table last August after the elections of July 23.
