ERA proposed the creation of a Committee for linguistic democracy and linguistic rights in Europe, in Bratislava.
On 24th and 25th November a Conference on Views on linguistic policy and linguistic rights in European Union was held in Bratislava, organized by the House of Europe, under favourable auspices of the Slovakian deputy prime minister Dušan Čaplovič and in cooperation with the EU Parliament and the EU Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Multilingualism, Ian Figel. Representatives of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic the European Member of Parliament Małgorzata Hanzlik, the Latvian parliamentarian and the former Minister of education Ina Druviete, Professor Robert Phillipson of the Business School of Copenhagen and Professor Hugo Baetens Beardsmore from the University of Brussels were present.Many subjects emerged during these three days, all about the current linguistic situation in European Union. It was said that decisions regarding institutional assemblies are always taken by English mother tongue people thanks to the prominent role English language has as language of work. As a consequence, the policies implemented are usually those wanted by USA and UK. It was underlined that during the negotiation to join the EU, for example, the Phrancophone Romania was forced by the EU Commission to use only English as language of work. And even where multilingualism should be the rule, for example in the EU Parliament, issuing documents in other languages, especially the eastern one, with delay, make difficult for non Anglophone members of Parliament to carry out their tasks. Lapo Orlandi, the Assistant secretary of the Esperanto Radical Association was invited to intervene during the main session of the conference: – “How do globalization, Europeization and the spread of English impact on the safeguard of linguistic diversity and national languages? – and mentioned the failure of linguistic policies in favour of multilingualism, the role of globalization which imposes English language as hegemonic language, the importance to meet a kind of communicative simplification in Europe and worldwide using a federal and neutral language able to set the citizens, workers, businessmen, consumers and researchers’ energies free. The Assistant-secretary also proposed to create a Committee for linguistic democracy in Europe including the participation of governments, administrations, political organizations and the academic field for the promotion of concrete initiatives as, for example, the allocation of a budget for every member state in order to promote linguistic rights, a sort of European Antitrust for languages that use the legal procedure for different violations: against monopolistic positions deriving from linguistic hegemony or introducing Esperanto as foreign language into public schools.“I want to thank the Slovak organizers – Lapo Orlandi stated – for their idea to unite all the major European experts in the field of linguistic rights and linguistic policy and for their openness on a matter as the International language Esperanto also. Unfortunately, the other governments’ delegations, fearing to call the Anglo-American linguistic colonialism with its real name, are now risking to produce an unuseful paper instead of a concrete document of Recommendations. It is urgent to create a Committee for linguistic democracy and linguistic rights in Europe in order to be ready to participate to the seminar for the creation of a first European conference on language, just in concomitance with the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome.