The Petitions committee of the European Parliament analyzed the draft report on linguistic immersion yesterday with a rough debate. A report resulting from the visit to Catalonia in December of nine MEPs from the commission chaired by the popular Dolors Montserrat. The draft calls for “the same treatment for Spanish and Catalan at school”.
The delegation’s visit corresponded to three requests, one from the Assembly for a Bilingual School. MEPs from the social democratic group, the Greens and the Left regretted yesterday that they had not been given enough time to analyze the draft text – the report is not binding – and that it had not been translated into the 24 official languages of the European Union, but only in English. An uneasiness that was added to the fact that the MEPs from these groups refused precisely to participate in the visit to Catalonia because they considered it biased. Between shouts, turns and a tension that was increasing, Dolors Montserrat insisted on going ahead with the session, despite the opposition of a few members.
The Estonian MP from the liberal Renew Europe group, Jana Toom, who chairs this mission, said she was ashamed of what was happening. And he added, referring to the visit to Catalonia, that “those who did not participate in the mission do not know anything about what happened”. In the report he reported “stories of harassment” in schools. For his part, the MEP of the European People’s Party, the German Peter Jahr, criticized that in Catalonia “there are no teaching hours in Spanish and pointed out the need for them to reach 25%” established by the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC).
On the other hand, the representative of the 5 Star Movement, Angela Danzi, who also participated in the mission, was critical of the report and pointed out that “the court ruling that calls for changing the entire educational system can increase the level of ‘hostility”.
For her part, PSOE MEP Cristina rejected the report and the mission, in which she had already declined to participate, after considering her part. “What I find incomprehensible is that the Petitions Commission, dominated by the Spanish PP and the Spanish far-right, tells a Member State what it must do and interferes with the mandate of the courts of justice on an issue that is the exclusive competence of the Member States,” he said. fight back
Junts MEP Toni Comín also cast doubt on the report in the face of other studies that warn of “a regression of the Catalan language” and that this regression “will go further”. “You, who appear to defend bilingualism, really want society to be monolingual in Spanish. Immersion is the only guarantee that Catalan maintains its vitality”, he stressed, addressing the PP, Ciutadans and Vox.
The conclusions and recommendations of the draft are not binding, and the text is now subject to amendments. It also indicates that families who request additional teaching in Spanish face attitudes that make them fear an increase in “hate speech” and cases of “intimidation and harassment”. In addition, he regrets that during the visit the delegation was scolded in the street.
The draft also calls on the European Commission to “closely monitor” whether “cultural and linguistic diversity” is respected in Catalonia, and to include considerations on this issue in the next report on the rule of law.
