Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-04-27-Speech-4-044"
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"en.20060427.3.4-044"2
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".
Mr President, multilingualism is something that should be encouraged and developed. Communication is a necessary and powerful tool. However, despite what the EU and many other charlatans wish to pretend, Britain uniquely is a global trading nation of considerable status. Thus the languages that should be appearing on the national curriculum – let me emphasise ‘national’ curriculum – should be those of the large and rapidly expanding economies of the world, which, in the case of Brazil, is an EU language: Portuguese. But the teaching of Mandarin or Cantonese Chinese, Arabic, Hindi and Russian would serve European countries far better than the insular concentration simply on EU languages.
The suggested European Indicator of Competence has its focus only on EU languages. This ignores the real world and illustrates the typical short-sightedness of the EU. It cannot be denied that part of the motivation for the Commission’s interest in this is that many, Mr Chirac included, resent the fact that the lingua franca of business throughout the world, and indeed the European Union, is English. People are becoming defensive about the potential erosion of their languages. However, the principal reason why the Commission is championing linguistic diversity is not any deep-seated fear that languages and cultures are being eroded, but the knowledge that their ultimate objective, a European federal superstate, is not possible until people can move only to be employable where the jobs are available.
The content and organisation of national education systems is an area in which the EU, in theory, has no jurisdiction, and this report highlights why. Member States have different priorities, different trading links and traditions, despite the EU’s detrimental attempts to change these. It is for this very reason that any attempt at harmonisational convergence throughout the EU should be opposed. The proposed Indicator offers no tangible benefits to a global trading nation, simply one of the many tools to pursue the dreadful objective of a federal Europe."@en1
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