Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-04-27-Speech-4-042"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20060427.3.4-042"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, Commissioner, esteemed rapporteurs, ladies and gentlemen, like the previous speakers, I too wish to emphasise how important the regional and national linguistic minorities are in this connection. Every language a person learns gives him or her access to a larger cultural dimension. It is enrichening to be able, as a Finn, to read the newspapers of the whole of Scandinavia, which is what we can now do thanks to the Swedish teaching we have in Finland. If we only had a knowledge of the major languages, we should still be unable to read these languages. In Finland, Swedish is both a native language and a neighbouring language.
The major languages are important, and will always remain so, and it is good that a lot of people know them. It must not, for all that, be the EU’s strategy to concentrate on, for example, the five biggest languages or only the official EU languages. In the Nordic countries and the Baltic Sea region, it is helpful to know, for example, Swedish, Russian or Finnish. A lack of knowledge of these languages both alienates people from each other and impairs basic economic conditions. At the moment, the Baltic Sea region is the region of the EU with the most rapid growth.
Respect for those who speak a minority or regional language is also of fundamental importance to European stability. For those of us who live in multilingual societies, it is only natural that the EU’s multilingual strategy should not be limited to just a handful of languages. I therefore strongly support Mrs Resetarit’s proposal that neighbouring countries’ languages and regional and minority languages be included in the strategy.
There are also languages outside the EU that are important. Forty-six million inhabitants of the EU have as their mother tongue a language other than that spoken by the majority of people in their countries. That is a full ten per cent of the EU’s population. We also observe that, where more than one language is spoken, economies are often more successful. A sympathetic attitude to diversity also produces economic benefits. There are no short cuts. Europe is multicultural and multilingual. Solidarity is splendid but, in order to have this, we must be able to feel that we have equality, firstly between one country and another and, secondly, within countries.
Traditionally, linguistic and regional minorities have been strong advocates of Europe and been prepared to learn other languages. Many of them are now very hard pressed. It is neither cosmopolitan in spirit nor compatible with the EU’s interests to turn our backs on a large part of our population. It is also partly in order to increase and consolidate the population’s confidence in the European Union that it is important to respect and affirm national linguistic and regional minorities. Too often, the majority populations of the EU Member States now wish to ignore their regional and national linguistic minorities."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples