La llengua a Catalunya en el context del mercat interior: una revisió del concepte de "mesura defecte equivalent"

Resum

The European Union operates as an internal market and has laid down regulations to protect the free movement of goods, persons, services and capital. Community law takes precedence over national law and prohibits Member States from passing what are known as measures having equivalent effect, i.e., legislation that might hinder the intra-Community free market. However, despite the existence of the Single Market since 1993, there is still talk of regulations of national scope (for example, requiring national products), and, in some cases, the European Union chooses to respect national authority. In this context, in linguistic matters, the case of Catalan could be regarded as an internal issue. Community law has made no clear ruling on the economic implications of language matters, nor to what extent they may amount to a measure having equivalent effect. Existing legislation has been concerned not with the protection of languages in themselves, but rather (in connection with labelling) with the health of the consumer and with pluralism in the media. On the basis of existing legislation, it is difficult to discern whether the protection of a cultural asset will be sufficient reason to constitute an imperative need excluding measures for the protection and fostering of a language from measures having equivalent effect. Nevertheless, there are reasons to be optimistic: since its constitution, the European Community has always been favourable towards the protection of the European cultural heritage, and everything would appear to suggest that national legislation aimed at protecting or fomenting a language could obtain the approval of the Union.