Spain legislated on September 19th in favour of having Catalan, Basque and Galician allowed in the country’s Parliament, a key promise of acting Prime Minister Carlos Sanchez in order to gather support for a new minority government and for the election in August of a Socialist Parliamentary Speaker. Spain is going to push for a similar recognition also at European level.
The reform will allow to use the other co-official languages of Spain in the lower chamber. So far, their use was limited to regional parliaments and town halls. Currently there are around nine million Catalan speakers, two million Galician ones and around 750,000 Basque.
The move received criticism from conservative parties in Spain and was viewed as a political concession of the Socialist Party to pressure from separatists. Critics also pointed at the added confusion to political debate that the move will bring.
A similar criticism was echoed in Brussels, as Spain is trying to include the three languages among the EU 24 official ones. On the same day, the EU’s General Affairs Council debated the issue but didn’t reach an agreement. All 27 member states must approve the addition of new languages to the list.
After the meeting, Sweden’s European Affairs Minister Jessika Roswall said that the EU needs to study more the legal and financial implications of such a proposal, adding that there in the EU “several, many, minority languages.”
