Several entities urge Spanish government to make Catalan official EU language

Nine different entities from Catalan-speaking territories have launched a joint manifesto urging the Spanish government to make the language official in the European Union's institutions.

Promoters want other groups to join the manifesto and for citizens to back the proposal. 

"There is no need to modify any current legislation to allow for Catalan to become an official language," said Òscar Escuder, the president of the Plataforma per la Llengua, an organization that promotes the use of the language.

The different entities want this manifesto to push the executive to make this change possible, especially as Spain takes on the rotating presidency of the European Union Council on July 1.  

"Discriminating" against Catalan

The manifesto was read on Monday in Palma, in the Balearic Islands, and warns that the lack of official status "discriminates the Catalan language in legislation," makes it "lose prestige," and "violates linguistic rights."

"Each year, European institutions approve legislation that regulates linguistic aspects," and "member states have to implement these new norms," which in "a lot of cases establish that some obligations would have to be made in one of the official languages from the European Union," the manifesto reads.

The nine entities consider it an "anomaly" that the "13th most spoken language in the European Union does not have the same recognition as a lot of European languages," something they believe goes against the fundamental European principle of "protection of multilingualism in the third article of the EU treaty and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union."