Albares relies on the use of co-official languages ​​in Congress to urge their recognition in the EU

BRUSELAS, 19 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares, has relied on the right to express oneself in Catalan, Basque and Galician, which has been applied since this Tuesday in the Congress of Deputies to urge the rest of the countries of the Union European Union to allow their recognition as official languages ​​of the community bloc.

"I will explain to my colleagues the specificity of the Spanish linguistic constitutional regime that makes it practically unique in the European Union and I will explain that these languages ​​are used within the Spanish Parliament," Albares expressed in a statement without questions upon his arrival at the meeting of ministers. of General Affairs of the EU.

At this meeting, the 27 will examine the Spanish request at a political level for the first time, although a majority of governments have already warned that they are not prepared to make a decision without first examining the financial and political consequences of the measure.

To convince its European partners, Spain has offered to assume the cost of the translation and interpretation of Catalan, Basque and Galician as common official languages, despite the fact that being part of the common regulations that govern the recognized languages ​​implies that This cost is covered by the community budget. The acting Government of Pedro Sánchez has not yet provided any figure for the estimated cost of this measure.

In any case, the head of European diplomacy has defended that the co-official languages ​​in Spain are not "minority languages" and has stated that Catalan, for example, is spoken by 10 million citizens, which places it "above many languages ​​that are official and languages ​​of representatives that will be around the table this morning.

"This is not a new or unprecedented proposal, Spain has been requesting it for almost 20 years," Albares insisted, later emphasizing that there are already "administrative arrangements" within the Council and the European Commission that allow the translation of many of its documents into co-official languages, although there is no equivalent regime with the European Parliament.

The Government announced last summer that it would submit to the Council of the EU the proposal to modify the regulation of official languages ​​​​of the EU, as required by Junts to support the investiture of Pedro Sánchez, but the matter did not come up for debate until last week in Brussels, when it was addressed for the first time at the level of ambassadors and it became clear that the partners do not share Spain's "sense of urgency" and that they need a legal opinion from the Council's legal services before making a decision.