2.3. Language policy of the European Union and the Council of Europe

The narrow perspective focusing mainly on building a national identity based on a language in postcolonial countries was abandoned in favour of including such topics as: national minority rights, globalisation and the extensive use of the English language as an international means of communication or bilingual education [transl.].

(Ferguson, 2006, p. 3, after: Kutyłowska, 2013, p. 11)

Languagepolicyhasbecomeasubjectofinterestamongvarioussocialandscientific circles as part of three areas: status planning, corpus planning, and assimilation planning (Philipson, 2003). The first area covers legal regulations relating to the functions of individual languages and their place in the institutional system of a given country or region. The second pertains to cultural and normative issues – it is used to define correct grammatical and spelling rules for a language. The third area most often refers to the provisions of the education law, determining, for example, the range of languages taught in schools.

Language policy has always been an important element in the activities of the European Community and the organisations preceding its founding. Pursuant to Art. 342 of the Consolidated Version of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (2012, p. 193): “The rules governing the languages of the institutions of the Union shall, without prejudice to the provisions contained in the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Union, be determined by the Council, acting unanimously by means of regulations.” The Council of the European Union issued relevant regulations amending previous legal acts concerning the Community’s language policy, which laid the foundations for its functioning. Such acts include regulations of the Council of the European Economic Community (Regulation No. 1…, 1958) and the Council of the European Atomic Energy Community (Regulation No. 1…, 1958), both of 15 April 1958 and with the same content, drawn up in the official and working languages of each community. The Council amended them many times due to the accession of new countries to the European Union. The latest regulation on this subject was issued on 13 May 2013 (Council Regulation No. 517…, 2013), following the admission of Croatia. This document recognised 24 languages as official tongues of European Union.

Some countries of the Community have several official languages, which makes the EU language policy even more complicated. As stated by Agnieszka Doczekalska (2013, p. 237):

Until the enlargement of the European Union in 2004, it was generally accepted that if one of the official languages of a multilingual candidate country already was or was supposed to become an official language of the Union, the status of an official language of the Union was not granted to the other languages of that country [transl.].

Malta was the first country to set a precedent by requesting the recognition of Maltese since English, one of Malta’s official languages, was already an official language of the European Union at the time of accession. Malta was followed by Ireland and eventually, both languages (Maltese and Irish) became official languages of the Community. Some countries did not apply for such status. Cyprus withdrew from the recognition of Turkish and Luxembourg did not apply for the recognition of Luxembourgish which had been one of its official languages since 1984 (Doczekalska, 2013). These examples indicate that the recognition of a language as official can sometimes be problematic, and it is up to the member states to apply for this status. Some dilemmas also exist with regard to the languages of national minorities and ethnic groups inhabiting the countries of the Union, as well as the mutual relations between their languages in the era of globalisation, unification, economisation and marketisation of many areas of social life.

The 2004 enlargement of the European Union by 10 new member states, mostly located in Central and Eastern Europe, resulted in the need to revise the language policy partly due to the increased diversity of the EU’s official languages caused by the newly added group of Slavic languages. To that end, 22 November 2004 saw the establishment of a dedicated EU post to manage issues of multilingualism, i.e. the European Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Multilingualism, with Jan Figel2 from Slovakia appointed to serve in this capacity.

In 2007, when Romania and Bulgaria were admitted to the Union, the language policy position was given a separate ministerial office, with Leonard Orban from Romania appointed as the Commissioner for Multilingualism. During his term of office, he promoted language learning through European Lifelong Learning

2 Also worth mentioning is the fact that the name of this position has changed, and its translations into Polish are inconsistent (its last part is often translated as “and of European languages”, cf. Pisarek, 2007).

Programmes. In the 2010–2014 period, the issues of multilingualism were handled by Androulla Vassiliou, a Cypriot, who served as the Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth. In the following years, the phrase “for multilingualism” disappeared from job titles. Vassiliou’s successor was Tibor Navracsics from Hungary, who was appointed the European Commissioner for Education, Youth Culture and Sport; and currently, Marija Gabriel from Bulgaria serves as the Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth. This results from the merger of the two posts and the earlier revision of the phrase “citizenship” which briefly replaced the previously used “multilingualism”. Despite the declarations published on the official websites of the European Union or implied by the names of positions held by senior EU officials, there has been a noticeable change in the significance of multilingualism in European politics, which may have resulted either from lowering the status of this issue or taking it for granted.

An important moment in the evolution of the European Union’s language policy was the release of A new framework strategy for multilingualism (2005). It clearly states, for the first time, that the issues of multilingualism are included in the commissioner’s responsibilities, reaffirms the European Commission’s commitment to promoting it, and sets out a vision of concrete actions targeting not only the official languages but also the 60 local and non-local languages that the migrant communities use in the European Union. The document’s introduction makes it clear that:

It is this diversity that makes the European Union what it is: not a “melting pot” in which differences are rendered down, but a common home in which diversity is celebrated, and where our many mother tongues are a source of wealth and a bridge to greater solidarity and mutual understanding.

(source: bit.ly/3ILEmuu)

After wide consultations, the European Committee of the Regions expressed its position on the framework strategy for multilingualism during its plenary session on 14 June 2006 (Opinion of the Committee of the Regions…, 2006). In addition to encouraging language learning as a factor enhancing mobility and economic potential, this strategic document expressed concern about linguistic diversity. It also stressed the need to protect local EU languages and raised concerns about the dominant role of English in the education systems of some non-English speaking countries. Moreover, it underlined the need to take into account multilingualism in the process of communication between the Commission and