A delegation of MEPs, none of them socialist, has been analyzing linguistic immersion in Catalonia since Monday

The socialist Cristina Maestre separates herself from the delegation because they consider the mission "a farce" of which they do not want to be part

   BARCELONA/MADRID, 15 Dic. (EUROPA PRESS) -

A delegation of 12 MEPs from the Petitions Committee of the European Parliament will make an information visit to Catalonia from Monday, December 18 to Wednesday, December 20, to analyze the linguistic immersion model. There will not be any socialist MEPs in the delegation, according to MEP Cristina Maestre, who considers the mission a "farce" of which they do not want to be part.

During the visit, they will meet with petitioners, representatives of families and teachers, associations, civil society, members of the judiciary and authorities, and they will also visit two educational centers in the Baix Llobregat region (Barcelona).

This information visit is organized to follow up on the different petitions received and debated by the parliamentary commission on linguistic immersion in Catalonia, such as petition 0858/2017 from the Assembly for a Bilingual School (AEB) on the impact of immersion in Catalan. at the school for families newly arrived in Catalonia.

There are also two private petitions, 0650/2022 on judicial precautionary measures related to education in Spanish in Catalonia, and 0826/2022 on the "alleged failure of the Catalan administration to allow education in Spanish in schools."

The official members of the delegation are Yana Toom (Renew Europe, Estonia) who is the president of the delegation; Peter Jahr (EPP, Germany); Jaroslaw Duda (EPP, Poland); Kosma Zlotowski (ECR, Poland); Virginie Joron (ID, France) and Maria Angela Danzi (NI, Italy).

In addition, the president of the Petitions commission and PP MEP, Dolors Montserrat, will accompany the delegation, along with other Spanish MEPs such as Rosa Estaràs (PP), Maite Pagazaurtundúa (Renew Europe), Diana Riba (Verds/ALE) and Jorge Buxadé (ECR).

Finally, no socialist MEP will be part of this delegation, where Cristina Maestre was initially scheduled to attend as a companion. "The agenda is so politicized, and so tailor-made for the strategy of discrediting the three rights, that no socialist MEP from any country has been willing to participate in this farce," Maestre said in a statement.

The MEP assures that the socialists proposed that the visit take into account all the diversity of educational centers, as well as civil society and social agents, but that "the right have refused and have opted for an absolutely biased agenda."

On the other hand, he regrets that the issue of linguistic diversity has already been debated up to four times in the Petitions Committee, and as a consequence, "other citizen petitions will not be able to be attended to due to this abuse in the management of the agenda." "As we have denounced on many occasions, Montserrat (president of the Petitions Committee) has not hesitated to force the procedures and bring to this chamber time and again issues that the European Commission itself has reiterated are not the competence of the EU" , has added.

The information visit will begin on Monday at 4 p.m. with meetings with the three petitioners, family representatives and teachers at the European Parliament Office in Barcelona.

On Tuesday morning the delegation will meet with members of the judiciary and visit 2 educational centers: one with "full linguistic immersion" and another in which 25% of classes are in Spanish for one of the school groups.

In the afternoon, MEPs will meet with associations, civil society and representatives of the Catalan authorities.

The Minister of Education of the Generalitat, Anna Simó, described this Wednesday in Parliament as "insane" the mission of European parliamentarians, although she has assured that she will meet with them.

Simó criticized the talk of the mission as if "he was going to the Americas to see the damn immersion" and assured that they tried to send them a list of schools where the immersion is applied.

Furthermore, he regretted that the MEPs will visit a special education center and a high school: "I don't know what linguistic immersion they want to see in a special education center and a secondary school."

For his part, the president of Platform for Language, Òscar Escuder, has sent a letter to the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, to denounce the "waste of public funds" that is the mission of the MEPs, given the "political bias " of the meetings and that the European Commission has already repeatedly expressed that it cannot intervene.