Brussels, 30/03/2009 (Agence Europe) - In response to a European Commission communication, an own initiative resolution, adopted by the European Parliament on Tuesday 24 March by 335 votes to 279, with 69 abstentions, highlights the need to support language learning in Europe, and this includes regional and minority languages. MEPs lay particular importance on maintaining multilingualism in those areas where two or more official languages co-exist.
Linguistic competence allows citizens to take advantage of opportunities to live and work in other member states and helps them take part in democratic life, Parliament says. “Recognising multilingualism requires the recognition that, within a single state, there are regions with their own language. We have to ensure that these languages are used in the educational system in order to avoid their decline. The EU must not call into question the decisions taken by the regions on this issue,” said Josu Ortuondo Larrea (ALDE, Spain) co-signatory of the alternative resolution proposed by the PES, ALDE and Greens/EFA to the report by Vasco Graça Moura (EPP-ED, Portugal), highlighting the need to apply the subsidiarity principle and allow European states and regions to determine the rules on languages of instruction. The new text also removes a paragraph that warned against promoting a language at the expense of the rights of speakers of another language, either through any form of constraint or of discrimination that would cause them to be ignored or harmed. MEPs also stressed the need for a full knowledge of the host state's official languages if immigrants and their families are to be fully integrated, the need for foreign language learning for adults, and they encourage sub-titling of television programmes as a way of helping language learning and practice in the European Union. (I.L./transl.rt)