Brussels, 02/09/2003 (Agence Europe) - During Thursday's plenary, the European Parliament is to debate the initiative report by Michl Ebner (EPP-ED, Italy) on "European regional and lesser-used languages- minority languages within the EU in the context of enlargement and cultural diversity".
In its adoption of the report by the Südtiroler Volkspartei MEP, the EP's committee on culture is calling upon the European Commission to: - present a legislative proposal based on articles 149, 150, 151 and 308 of the EC Treaty, on regional and lesser-used European languages, by 31 December 2003; - use scientific criteria to establish criteria to define, in view of a possible programme for linguistic diversity, including the notion of minority or regional language. According to the European Commission, 40 million Europeans speak a minority language, and, after the forthcoming wave of enlargement, this figure will rise to 46 million.