L'aplicació de la resolució del Parlament Europeu sobre la llengua catalana a les institucions europees

Resum

In December of 1990, the European Parliament, in plenary session, passed Resolution 12345/90, dealing with languages in the European Community, by an overwhelming majority. In the specific case of  Catalan, this was the culmination of a long political process initiated in 1987 with the presentation of a petition with 100,000 signatures to the then President of the European Parliament, Lord Plumb. Nevertheless, the European Parliament has no legislative power, nor are its resolutions binding on Community institutions. Consequently, two years later, little progress has been made in the area of Catalan. In May of 1992, Catalan representatives to the European Parliament managed to have various publications appear in Catalan. The Office of the European Community in Barcelona also collaborated in this effort, although the Office only required adequate knowledge of Spanish as a prerequisite for permanent employment, without mentioning Catalan. Attempts were also made to incorporate Catalan into the LINGUA program (a program for learning and mastering European languages, which also includes Irish and Luxembourgian), but nothing can be done in this regard until the end of the first phase of the program in 1994. On the few occasions when Catalan has been used in parliamentary meetings or in sessions of the Court of Justice, interpretation expenses have had to be defrayed by the Catalan regional government, since the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science has abandoned all responsibility for the matter. For this reason, the triumphant note on which the European Parliament's Resolution was offered in 1990 is now cause for uneasiness among Catalan public opinion, since there has been no tangible forward movement in this area. Continued struggle and pressure will be necessary to achieve success on such a confusing and difficult issue.