Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-11-14-Speech-2-419"
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"en.20061114.40.2-419"2
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"Mr President, I wish to begin by thanking the colleagues who helped me draw up this report, and especially the members of the Committee on Culture and Education. I also wish to thank Commissioner Figeľ, who has kept in contact with us, for his positions on plurality and on the issues related to minority languages, etc. Thanks are also due to all the other colleagues, from several groups, and other people involved in the report, especially the members of the various NGOs for the normalisation of languages who were in contact with us during the preparation of the report. I would like to mention in particular Vicent Santaló, a member of the legal staff at the Catalan Parliament, who worked with us until his death last summer.
The main aim of this report is to move forward the concept of plurality in languages. Plurality and diversity are common values of the European Union. There should be unity among all Europeans in this area, which should have plurality as one of its main aims, because a non-plural Europe is a false and devalued Europe. This is reflected in a certain manner in languages. As you know, in sociolinguistic terms there are ‘normalised’ languages, which are the fully official languages used in all walks of our lives. There are also ‘minorised’ languages, which are not fully official and cannot be used for every purpose, despite the fact they are the main languages in specific language communities. There is also a third group, which is that of minority languages. All these groups must be respected and preserved, and the preservation of language diversity is one of the aims of the European Institutions.
Europeans are not as multilingual as we think. Unfortunately, many European citizens have only one language – usually their mother tongue – and one of the main goals of the European Union is to have a citizenship able to speak several languages. In order to achieve that, it is very important for there to be a change in mentality. Our society was formed under the influence of Jacobinist states. Most European states are unilingual officially, and this is a remnant of Jacobinism. However, this is not a true reflection of the facts. The aim of the European Union is not to maintain this point of view, but to preserve genuine plurality and work towards citizens being able to speak several languages.
We need a European language policy. That policy should promote multilingualism, improve the language skills of European citizens across the European Union and preserve all languages, whether or not they are official EU languages. To this end, the budget and European programmes must support not just the main languages, but all languages, in order to improve diversity. In this way we must make a special effort to support endangered languages. Every language is good for mankind, and if a language is lost we have all lost something because each language has its own unique expressions. It is for this reason that we must preserve genuine plurality and true diversity. In this sense, it is necessary to draw up a full report on the actions still to be developed."@en1
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"Bernat Joan i Marí (Verts/ALE ),"1
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