Noticias
Debate Europe
For the second time, the Commission has set up a multilingual internet debate open to all. The three topics chosen this time are «Climate change and energy», «Future of Europe» and «Intercultural dialogue». The debate opened on January 29th, with good press coverage in Catalonia (for instance, paper.avui.cat/article/mon/113797).
In 2006 the Commission had launched a first debate, which was extremely successful in generating a lively discussion. The three topics then were: «Europe's economic and social development», «Feeling towards Europe and the Union's tasks» and «Europe's borders and its role in the world». Participation centred round the second of the three topics.
But the reason I mention that first debate was that for the first time there was a Catalan option alongside the official languages of the institutions of the EU. Not only that: the news spread so quickly and effectively across the Catalan-speaking web that participation proved far higher than one would have expected on the basis of demographics. In the end, after nine months of debates, the Catalan site had more interventions than had those in Dutch, Swedish, Portuguese, Greek and Polish: indeed, it took sixth place overall, behind English, French, German, Spanish and Italian.
Perhaps it was the success of the first debate that has led to an even greater accomplishment this time: on February 21st Catalan, with 808 interventions, was second only to English (2062), and far ahead of Italian (381), French (302) and Spanish (268). No other language had more than 83 interventions on that day. Readers can see for themselves: forums.ec.europa.eu.
This clearly shows how responsive the Catalan-speaking community is to opportunities of this sort, and is also a tribute to the work being done out of the Commission’s office in central Barcelona, where the issues of multilingualism and linguistic diversity are taken seriously.
Not every initiative comes from the authorities, however. Visitors to www.europarl.cat will be pleased, even amazed, to find the portal of the European Parliament, with an option for català / valencià alongside the 22 official languages of the institutions of the EU. Clicking on this link leads one to a presentation by the President of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Pöttering. All of this is the initiative of a Catalan citizen, annoyed at the limited use of Catalan, Basque and Galician allowed by the Parliament, as agreed on July 3rd 2006: www6.gencat.net. As reported in the Catalan press, the Parliament may take legal action to put an end to this token, but civilised, protest: www.avui.catarticle/mon_politica.
Miquel Strubell
Lecturer in the Department of Language and Culture at the UOC (Open University of Catalonia)
