CATALONIA -- Complaints about attacks on Catalan language brought to European Commission - VilaWeb

Complaints about attacks on Catalan language brought to European Commission - VilaWeb

A group comprised of members of the European Parliament and
representatives of the Platforma per la Llengua have asked the European
Commission to act to prevent language discrimination. They ask that such
discrimination be considered as serious as the discrimination against
sexual orientation, religion, and ethnic origin. Ramon Tremosa, Salvador
Sedó, Maria Badia, Raimon Obiols, Raül Romeva, Izaskun Bilbao, Iñaki
Irazabalbeitia and the president of the intergroup on Minorities and
Languages, the Hungarian Socialist Czaba Tabajdi, have demanded that EU
legislation adopt 'measures to combat' attacks on language.

The director of the Plataforma per la
Llengua, Daniel Mundet, presented a report with forty cases of language
discrimination to the representatives of the EU leadership, in
particular by the public administration. 'This cannot be allowed in a
state which is considered democratic; there are too many cases for this
to be just anecdotal,' he complained. In twenty-five of these cases,
there are security force agents invovled: of the Spanish police and the
Civil Guard. 'It is a clear that there is an attitude that is
particularly insensitive to citizens by agents who in theory should be
serving those citizens, who impose the Spanish language and often bring
legal proceedings or even physical aggression against those citizens,'
said Mundet.

Tremosa, Sedó, Badia, Obiols, Romeva, Bilbao, Irazabalbeitia and
Tabadji have sent a complaint to the European Commissioner of Justice,
Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, Viviane Reding, and to that of
Education, Culture, Multilinguism and Youth, Androulla Vassiliou. The
MEPs consider it dysfunctional that 'the EU legislation prohibits and
combats discrimination for sexual orientation, religion, and ethnic
origin, but not in the cases in which citizens are discriminated against
for their language.' And they denounce that 'unfortunately, in some
member states, there is a systematic policy of language discrimination
whicih requires a legal response at a European level.'

Romeva was very frank: 'We are asking Commissioner Reding —Justice,
Fundamental Rights, and Citizenship—to stop saying that this is an
internal matter. People rely on Europe as a project that serves to
protect its rights. It's frustrating to have to spend ten years working
for Catalan to be an official language in the European institutions and
not have been successful. And I can tell that that makes many people
stop trusting the European project… It's a question of human rights, but
it's also the same idea as for the European Union. The EU cannot stop
being the guarantor of human rights.'

The MEPs and the Plataforma per la Llengua propose modifying the
directive 2000/78/EC from November 2000 on equality of treatment in the
labor market in order to disallow discrimination of a worker or
candidate in a job interview because of the language they speak. They
also want to include language in the proposal for a European directive
that 'implements the principle of equal treatment among people
irrespective of their religion or beliefs, capacities, age, or sexual
orientation.' In addition, they ask Reding and Vassiliou that they
articulate a specific directive on non-discriminatory language policy,
based on Article 21 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights.

The director of the Plataforma per la Llengua has accused the Spanish
State of 'not acting strongly enough' against the aggressions, and it
criticized it as a 'lack of sensitivity' and assured that 'it wants the
Catalan language to have the same recognition and rights of equality as
Spanish'.

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