At the ELEN General Assembly on the 3rd of November, Marga Payola, Head of International Relations at Plataforma per la Llengua, the Catalan-language NGO, presented three motions for resolution regarding the current political situation in Catalonia, the presence of the Catalan language within the Northern Catalonia education system and the reciprocity of audiovisual signals in Catalan between the various Catalan-speaking territories. The resolutions were approved by the ELEN General Assembly.
The first resolution denounces the major infringement of civil rights which is currently taking place in Catalonia. In addition to the multiple legal irregularities taking place in the criminal proceedings against the political prisoners, it also denounces the infringement of the defendants' linguistic rights, as they will not have the right to be tried in Catalan, their mother tongue.
The second resolution calls for France to guarantee that the Catalan language be taught in all education centres in Northern Catalonia, to ensure the revival of Catalan within this territory. To this end, President Macron is reminded of the promises he made during his election campaign in terms of respecting France's linguistic diversity and Macron's government is urged to ratify the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML).
The third resolution requires Spain, France and Italy to comply with the provisions of Directive 2010/13/EC on audiovisual media. The governments involved are therefore requested to respect the free circulation of audiovisual signals in Catalan across their borders and to sign the necessary bilateral agreements to put an end to the obstacles preventing such signals from being received in some parts of Northern Catalonia and, particularly, in Alghero.
In addition to the resolutions presented by the Catalan-language NGO, the ELEN General Assembly also debated intensely on the strategy to be taken with regard to the coming Elections to the European Parliament, which will take place in May, as well as the need to invite political parties from various states to include some minimum points to defend the linguistic rights of non-official EU languages in their election manifestos.
The 2018 ELEN General Assembly took place in Dublin on the 2nd and 3rd of November, bringing together representatives from the European entities which defend and promote linguistic equality within the EU.
