EU ministers' discussion on making Catalan official over in less than 5 minutes
Spain explained "adapted proposal" for Catalan, Basque and Galician with no other member state speaking on issue
Making Catalan, Basque and Galician official languages of the European Union was one of the points on the agenda for Wednesday's meeting of European Affairs ministers.
According to an EU diplomatic source, the discussion lasted barely two minutes, with only the Spanish Secretary of State for the EU, Pascual Navarro, speaking.
Navaro explained to the rest of the countries the Spanish government's "adapted proposal," which aims to prevent minority languages around Europe from being able to use the case of Catalan, Basque and Galician as precedent to request official status.
No representative from any other state commented on the matter, according to the source, who was present in the meeting room: "There have been no comments."
Item number 11 of 12 at Wednesday's meeting was a "state of play" on the changes to the bloc's language policy, after the Spanish government sent other member states an " adapted proposal" on Monday night.
It set out set six conditions to prevent other languages from using the case of languages co-official in Spain to make similar requests.
The conditions state that they must be "original" languages of a member state, have "constitutional recognition," be "working languages" in the national parliament, have been used for at least 10 years in the EU institutions by administrative agreements, that EU treaties have been translated into these languages with a certified copy for the European Council, and that it is a member state that requests the making a language official and assumes the cost.
All these are tailor-made requirements that Catalan, Basque and Galician meet, which Spain hopes will ease concerns of other countries with minority languages. The European Commission is yet to provide a report on the cost of the initiative.
Before the meeting, some delegations expressed their displeasure at the fact that the Spanish government sent the "adapted proposal" just one day before the meeting, and without the legal and costing report that most countries have requested from the beginning.
"We received the proposal on Monday evening, and in Spanish. We haven't had time to analyze it," said Finland's Minister of European Affairs, Anders Adlercreutz, upon arrival at the meeting.
It is the third meeting when the issue has been discussed following September 19 and October 24.