Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez became an unlikely champion of multilingualism on Thursday by requesting Basque, Catalan and Galician be recognized as official languages of the EU.
The proposal, which was outlined in a letter sent by Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares to the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union and the body’s secretary-general, Thérèse Blanchet, argued “Spanish languages other than Castilian that enjoy official status in Spain” should be added to the EU’s 24 official languages.
Albares proposed the General Affairs Council take up the matter when it meets in September.
The seemingly sudden desire to have Basque, Catalan and Galician recognized in Brussels is linked to Sánchez’s will to placate the Catalan separatists whose support he needs in order to remain in office.
After last month’s inconclusive national election, Spain’s parliament is in a technical tie, with the country’s left-wing and right-wing political blocs each controlling 171 seats in the 350-seat chamber. That’s made winning over the support of the seven lawmakers that belong to the Catalan separatist Junts party a key priority for Sánchez.
In exchange for Junts’ support for Francina Armengol, the socialist candidate for the presidency of the Spanish parliament, Sánchez’s agreed to green-light the use of Catalan in the hemicycle in Madrid and to push for its recognition as an official language of the EU.
SPAIN NATIONAL PARLIAMENT ELECTION POLL OF POLLS
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But getting the EU to recognize Basque, Catalan and Galician, which are co-official languages in Spain, is easier said than done.
To date, Irish is the only one of the bloc’s co-official languages with official recognition at the EU level, a status that allows citizens to use it to communicate with the institutions.
Giving Spain’s co-official languages that same level of distinction requires the Council to unanimously agree to modify its existing regulations. It’s unclear if all of the EU’s member countries will back a move which might lead national minorities to demand their own languages enjoy equal recognition in Brussels.
Other EU members may be spooked by the potential cost of the change: Staffing the EU institutions with Basque, Catalan and Galician translators would likely cost millions of euros.
It’s not clear if there would be a redistribution of the cash allocated for the institutions’ translation services or if Spain would need to shoulder a greater share of the costs.
The absence of sufficient numbers of qualified translators could also lead Basque, Catalan and Galician to suffer a similar fate to that of Irish, which became an official language of the EU at Ireland’s request in 2007 but lacked the resources to enjoy that status until 2022.
In Brussels, Junts’ de facto leader, former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, said he expected Spain to use its rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union to make swift progress on the proposal.
He added the process would provide Sánchez with a “magnificent opportunity” to prove he can keep his word ahead of further negotiations with Junts.
Barbara Moens contributed reporting.