Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-04-27-Speech-4-040"
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"en.20060427.3.4-040"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, I would like to begin by congratulating Mr Mavrommatis on his report and also the Commission on complying with a decision adopted by the Barcelona European Council in 2002.
I am convinced that a decisive element in terms of the success of the European integration process and also promoting European citizenship is the citizens’ knowledge of the different European languages, in addition to their mother tongue, and that this is also positive in terms of improving mobility within the Union.
Given that we do not currently have data on the true linguistic and communication capacities of the Union’s citizens, though we know that they differ greatly amongst the Member States, I believe that the European Indicator of Language Competence may provide a good incentive for the improvement and convergence of foreign language learning policies on the part of the Member States.
As well as contributing to an improvement in communication and mutual understanding amongst the citizens of Europe, this system will also lead to a qualitative improvement in the teaching of foreign languages in European education and training systems, thereby contributing to the achievement of the Lisbon objectives. The indicator will stimulate the exchange and knowledge of the good practices of the various Member States and will be a reliable system for measuring progress, initially in the five languages most widely taught within the Union: English, French, German, Spanish and Italian.
The choice of these five languages for the first stage should not prejudice the other European languages, but it should represent the beginning of a process, without ruling out the possibility of including other languages during subsequent stages, of course. Specifically, thanks to the introduction of certain amendments that we have worked on in conjunction with the rapporteur, his report leaves open the possibility of a future evaluation of a greater number of official European languages, without prejudicing the teaching of the other languages not evaluated by the indicator.
Before I finish, I would like to make it clear that, although this report is not the right place to deal with the situation of the minority languages or of other non-European languages, but that it is intended to improve the language competency of the citizens, the quality of teaching and learning systems for the official European languages, it should not in any way prejudice the recognition and protection of those languages that are not official in the Union, but which are official in certain Member States.
I would like to end by saying that I am pleased with the text since it represents an important step forward towards a closer Union amongst the European citizens, as well as being very good news in terms of improving education within the Union."@en1
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