Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-10-12-Speech-3-217"
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"en.20051012.19.3-217"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the own initiative report by Mr Portas on integrating immigrants in Europe through schools and multilingual education touches on an issue of capital importance, which concerns all the Member States equally. This report achieved universal acceptance during the discussions in our committee and Mr Portas received our congratulations.
The right of immigrants' children of school age living in our countries must be extended from learning the host language to learning their mother tongue and to access to the culture of their country of origin. Learning a mother tongue should not, however, be at the expense of the language of the host country, which must remain the main teaching language.
The multilingualism safeguarded by the Union as a means of dialogue between cultures thus takes on a new integration dimension. It strengthens cross-culturalism as a new approach in education, it further safeguards multiculturalism as a particular identity of the European area and it highlights preferential development potential for our societies.
Over recent decades, most immigration in Europe has been internal, by which I mean people in Europe have been moving within its borders. These movements have changed the cultural map definitively in numerous countries. In Greece, for example, the permanent foreign population accounts for 10% of the total population. Greece has changed from a country from which people emigrate to a host country for immigrants, most of whom are of productive age. They have children of school age and have come to our country to stay.
Nonetheless, we cannot overlook the fact that, when countries expand with different nationalities, xenophobia and racist reactions against people increase worryingly. All this reality transfers to schools, which act as the mirror of a society. Until very recently, our education systems functioned on the basis of an assimilating approach, under which the presence in school of immigrant children with a different linguistic and cultural expression from the official language and culture was approached as a problem which had to be sidelined.
That is why Greece adopted a law back in 1996 introducing cross-cultural education as a basic element of its education system."@en1
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