Plaid Cymru Euro-MP Jill Evans has welcomed the European Commission's climbdown after the Welsh MEP highlighted how a new scheme snubbed Wales and the Welsh language.

The 'Europass' scheme, hailed as a new European jobseekers passport when it was launched at the beginning of the month, ignored the existence of Welsh when it came to recognising linguistic skills.

Ms Evans immediately took up the matter with Europe's Education Commissioner Jan Figel. Mr Figel has since apologised to the Plaid MEP for the snub and the omission has been corrected.

The 'Europass' is made up of a series of documents that can be completed online including a 'Language Passport' to demonstrate an individual's linguistic skills. Previously, the document allowed people to select their mother tongue from a dropdown list that ranged from Arabic to Turkish and included Catalan, Hebrew, Bulgarian, Korean as well as English. But the list did not allow users to list Welsh either as their mother tongue or as a second language.

Welcoming the climbdown, Jill Evans MEP said:

"I welcome Mr Figel's swift action and his mature decision to apologise for this snub to Wales. I accept his apology and his explanation that the omission was due to a test version of the website being put up rather than the final version.

"In his reply to me Mr Figel acknowledged that people should be able to indicate their first or second languages amongst their skills even if they're not official EU languages. This is a very significant statement and underscores the value of Welsh language skills in the job market, even at a European level.

"The Europass scheme has the potential to stimulate jobs and help growth by making it easier for people to look for work in other EU countries. As such it was absolutely vital that the snub to Welsh should have been put right and I'm very pleased that the EU Commission acted so quickly on this occasion."

Diwedd/Ends.