Spanje wil erkenning van het Catalaans in de EU-grondwet (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - As the negotiations on the Constitution enter the final straight, another issue has been added to the long list of those that need to be dealt with - arranging a new status for other languages in the EU.

At a meeting of senior member state officials to discuss the draft Constitution in Dublin on Tuesday (4 May), Spain asked about "the status of Spanish languages other than Spanish".

With Catalan particularly in mind, but also other regional languages such as Basque and Galician, Spain wants them to be given the same status as Irish currently has.

While not an official language of the EU, the treaties of the European Union are translated into Irish and people may contact the EU institutions, and expect a reply, in Irish.

But whereas Irish is the first official language of Ireland, though only spoken on a daily basis by a small percentage of the population, Catalan, Basque and Galician amongst others, are languages of regions in Spain.

However, they are spoken by a sizeable number of people - Catalan has over 7 million speakers, more than several current member states.

Basque has over 600,000 speakers - almost a third more than Maltese.

Sources present at the meeting in Dublin say that other member states did not object to the request by Spain.

However, the European Commission has asked for a protocol to be attached to the Constitution saying that member states should provide help with the financial costs.

Currently there are 20 official languages in the EU, of which French, German and English are the daily 'working' languages.

The issue of the status of Catalan are among a whole series of open questions still to be finalised in the negotiations on the Constitution.

The Irish EU Presidency is hoping to get the vast majority of them sorted out in May leaving the big balance of power issues to a meeting of EU leaders in June.