Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-16-Speech-2-024"
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"en.20000516.2.2-024"2
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"Mr President, allow me to begin by thanking the rapporteur, Mr Ferber, for the good work he has done. There is a lot in this report which has been well thought-out and which it is very easy indeed to support. I want to talk about an issue which, in the long term, will be very important for Parliament and for the EU as a whole and which many Members have already touched upon here today, namely the language question.
Rarely perhaps is the linguistic diversity of Europe seen so incredibly clearly as in a debate in this Chamber in which eleven different languages are being interpreted between. Naturally, this is expensive and time-consuming. Yet it has been assumed without question, throughout the history of the EU, that whoever is present here should be able, if at all possible, to speak their own language.
A good deal in the report under discussion is based on the assumption that the EU will be enlarged by six new Member States in 2004. What is more, that may be an underestimate. A few days ago, the Commission said it was its own objective to be able to welcome ten new Member States by the year 2005. I am among those for whom the greatest challenge for the EU is an enlargement whose ultimate goal is the reunification of a Europe which has always been divided by artificial borders. I nonetheless believe that it is more realistic to proceed on the basis of the somewhat lower figure quoted in the report by the Committee on Budgets. Even that figure is awfully large, bearing in mind the number of new languages involved.
Proceeding on the basis that there will be “5+1 countries” in the first round of negotiations – a lot can obviously happen during the next few years, but these six countries nonetheless have a two-year head start in terms of the negotiations – this means that five new official languages will be added to the eleven we already have at present. There is no question of these newly welcomed countries and their languages being treated any differently from the way in which the existing Member States are treated. It must equally go without saying that Hungarian, Polish or Estonian Members of this Parliament should be able to speak their own languages, just as we existing Members are entitled to speak ours. Nor can we put ourselves in a situation whereby a country with access to trained interpreters and translators can become a Member State of the EU, while another country which does not have professionals of these kinds cannot. That is precisely why it is so important that the issue is highlighted right now. That is what the rapporteur is doing, and I think it is excellent. We must not, in a few years’ time, find ourselves in a situation in which the issue has still not been resolved.
We should also be clear about the fact that things are happening very quickly right now. We are dealing with countries which are developing very rapidly, which means that we too must act quickly in order to have settled the language question by the time these countries join the Union."@en1
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