There is no legal impediment to Catalan becoming the 25th official language of the European Union. This is the main conclusion of the international legal report on the official status of Catalan in the EU, which was presented by Plataforma per la Llengua at a press conference this afternoon in Brussels.
This document has been drawn up by internationally recognised experts in the field of European law and the European language regime: Karen McAuliffe, Professor of Law and Language at the University of Birmingham, and Takis Tridimas, Professor of European Law and Co-Director of the Centre of European Law at King's College London. Jurist Pol Cruz-Corominas coordinated the report.
This is the first legal report in academia that analyses the request, made by the Spanish government to the Council of the EU last August, to make the Catalan language official. No one in the academic field of European law would argue that Catalan does not meet the legal requirements to be an official language of the European Union.
This document, commissioned and promoted by the Plataforma per la Llengua, analyses the main issues surrounding the legal question of the official status of Catalan: whether it is necessary for a language to be an official language in a Member State in order to be an official language in the EU; whether it is necessary for a language to be an official language in the whole of a Member State's territory or whether it is sufficient for it to be an official language in only part of it; and whether the language in question must have been previously mentioned in the Treaties to be an official language.
After the Spanish government announced that it would assume the additional costs of making Catalan official in the EU, one of the main questions raised was the legal framework for such recognition. That is why Plataforma per la Llengua commissioned this study.
Disagreements with the Council of the EU and meetings to present the report in Madrid
In the report, the co-authors criticise the position of the Council of the EU in 2004, when it adopted a restrictive stance on a request to grant semi-official status to Catalan. The Council pointed out that Catalan was not a language mentioned in the Treaties.
The authors consider that that decision lacked a legal basis and was motivated by political interests, as other jurists in this field had already stated. They stress that the current Treaty is different (more inclusive of languages such as Catalan) and that, therefore, a similar response now has even less legal standing.
The organisation has sent the report to all permanent representations today and will travel to Madrid tomorrow to present it to one of the embassies with whom it has been talking to over the past few days.
Consequences of non-official status
Furthermore, the negative consequences of a hypothetical unfavourable response are analysed. On the one hand, it implies the "unofficialisation" of Catalan in certain areas of its own territory. Moreover, it undermines the principle of good administration as defined by the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights when this same principle is applied at the Catalan level. According to this principle, a citizen must be able to communicate in any circumstances with institutions in any of the official languages.
At a press conference in Brussels this afternoon, the report's coordinator, Pol Cruz-Corominas, highlighted the paradox that a denial of official status would therefore be at odds with the EU's claims to promote multilingualism and protect so-called regional languages.
Report author and King's College London professor Takis Tridimas said the EU Council has full discretion to decide which languages are official, and there's no legal obstacle to Catalan becoming one. In this regard, Professor Karen McAuliffe of the University of Birmingham highlighted the flexibility of the EU's language regime and how it has adapted to its political and pragmatic needs.
The president of Plataforma per la Llengua, Òscar Escuder, explained that the organisation has already sent the report to all the European permanent representations, and it will meet tomorrow in Madrid with an embassy to discuss the report.
