Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-03-24-Speech-2-191"
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"en.20090324.26.2-191"2
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"Mr President, I abstained on this report for two reasons, even though I fully agree with the title ‘Multilingualism: an asset for Europe and a shared commitment’.
We have been told here today that the report deals with ‘certain national quarrels in Spain’. I am very sceptical about using a debate on multilingualism and on the promotion of language as a sort of cover, or proxy, or political bargaining tool for the various national issues in all our Member States, and that appears to have happened in relation to some of the debate on this at committee and here.
I do not attack any of the rights of minority language speakers. In fact, I fully defend them and I really do feel that we must respect the right of our EU citizens whose first language is a minority language. There has to be a place for these languages in the European Parliament, but not necessarily as official working languages, especially if these citizens happen to be equally fluent in English – as in our case. Contributing to important debates in plenary and at committees, for example, in a minority language that has then to be translated passively and into over 20 other languages compromises the whole purpose of democratic debate through the lost nuance in translation, and maybe even misunderstanding. Our democratic mandate here is to persuade as many people as possible to see our point of view, and the difficulty of getting a sufficient number of suitably qualified interpreters is another matter altogether. I therefore abstained for these two reasons."@en1
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