this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
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[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (23 children)

In exchange for key support needed to form a new minority government in 2023, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez entered into an elaborate deal with Catalan separatist lawmakers in which he committed to getting Catalan, Basque and Galician recognized as official languages of the EU.

The move requires unanimous backing of the bloc’s 27 member countries, and Spanish officials spent the past two years lobbying European capitals for support.

My understanding is that each EU member got to choose a single official language, and that the EU was obliged to support that language. Regardless of whether Spain is willing to pay in perpetuity, I have a hard time believing that Spain is going to get unanimous support, since it'd presumably create a can of worms for other governments who would then get political pressure from regional groups to fund their particular favored languages as official EU languages, and who may not want to fund that. I mean, kind of a slap in the face to various regional groups in other countries if Galician gets official EU language status, but a regional language in another EU member that has official status at a national level doesn't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_official_languages_by_country_and_territory

There are a lot of official languages at the national level there.

EDIT: Maybe Spain could just commit to internally providing and funding Catalan, Basque, and Galician translations of EU official documents, as that wouldn't require sign-off from other EU members.

EDIT2: Huh. Apparently none of Catalan, Basque, and Galician actually have official language status today at the national level in Spain. If they were to become EU official languages, I think that they might be the only languages that don't have national official status, but do have EU official status.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 weeks ago (14 children)

Well, Belgium has three official languages, it just happens to share them with its neighbors. Ireland also has two, Luxembourg three, Malta two...

Also Catalan is spoken as a first language by about 4 million people. That is more than the population of the smallest 8 EU countries.

If costs are a concern one could argue that all these countries shouldn't have things translated into their national languages either. Especially when another official language could do the job. While we are at it, might as well tell the Scandinavian EU members to just learn German. The Baltic countries could just agree on one language. What is up with Slovakia, Slovenia and Czech Republic anyways. Just merge and agree on one language duuh...

Political factors are also a major consideration. France, for instance, has a national policy against the recognition of domestic minority languages like Basque, Breton and Corsican.

I think this is more of the real concern here.

While Belgium, Cyprus, Portugal, the Netherlands, Romania and Slovakia supported granting EU recognition to the Spain’s additional official languages, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany and Sweden backed Italy’s demands for “further clarity on the costs and legal implications of the move.”

Belgium needs to balance Flanders and Wallonia. Cyprus has its Greek-Turkish situation with Armenians and Maronites in the mix. I think there is some Slovakia vs. Czech Republic beef from the separation of Czechoslovakia involved...

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago (13 children)

Also Catalan is spoken as a first language by about 4 million people.

That alone does not make a good reason. There are 12 million speakers of Bavarian. Should that also become an official EU language?

Ned dass i do wos dagegn häd.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Why not? They do it for Irish and native speakers are 10 000ish iirc

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