Brussels, 08/05/2002 (Agence Europe) - The World Esperanto Association (UEA) has filed a complaint with Ombudsman Jacob Söderman for linguistic discrimination against thousands of people who, while having a good or even excellent knowledge of English, cannot be recruited in one of the 2500 organisations located in Brussels because the latter require "English mother tongue" and "English native speaker". According to Professor Corsetti, UEA President, this discrimination runs counter to Article 2 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (Ed.: which bans linguistic discrimination).
The complaint aims to make the European Commission: - recognise the discriminatory nature of the various types of recruitment announcements for posts officially open to all citizens but which are unofficially reserved for native English speakers; - ensure that it will no longer finance the companies or organisations that exercise discrimination against European citizens that are not English mother tongue; - study the means and solutions to prevent linguistic discrimination exercised by organisations that it partially or fully finances. (For more information: see komunikadcentro@esperanto.org).