Jill Evans MEP is celebrating the success of Plaid Cymru's campaign for Welsh to be given official recognition in the EU. On Thursday the Assembly's European Affairs Committee will consider a proposal for limited use of Welsh in EU institutions. Plaid Cymru has been campaigning to secure status for the Welsh language on an EU level for two years.

Speaking from Wales Jill Evans said:

"The Labour Government repeatedly rejected and ridiculed our campaign for this provision for the Welsh language during the UK Presidency of the Union last year. A year ago this week I challenged Tony Blair on this issue in the European Parliament and his only reaction was to pretend to play with his headphones and make a tongue in cheek comment about this being the way to achieve consensus across Europe. Many commentators and members from other countries were disgusted at his derogatory attitude towards linguistic diversity.

I am glad that Labour has done a u-turn on this and now accepts our arguments that Welsh should be recognised and used in the EU.

But as well as being late this proposal does not go far enough. The First Minister dismisses the possibility for people to correspond with the European Parliament in Welsh because it hasn't yet been accepted by the Parliament. This is only because a few Conservative MEP's in the parliament's governing body have blocked action on this. Thanks to my parliamentary group they now have to reconsider this decision.

The National Assembly must push for Welsh to be used in the European Parliament as well. We can't let a few Tories decide that citizens can't write a letter and get a reply in their language of choice.

And the funding must come from the UK Government not out of the Assembly budget for promoting Welsh which is already stretched. In the case of Catalan, Galician and Basque the Spanish state is funding translation, not the devolved administrations. We should follow their lead."

Notes

Following enlargement in May 2004 the official languages of the EU increased from 11 to 20. The Governments of Ireland and Spain then put the issue of languages back on the agenda in July 2004 by requesting linguistic rights for Irish, Catalan, Galician and Basque. On June 13th 2005 the European Council decided that Irish be made a working language of the EU and that languages that were official in part of a member state territory could be used in relation to EU institutions at the request of the member state. Spain made this request for Catalan, Basque and Galician and are initially paying the translation and interpretation costs. It is up to the state to negotiate an agreement with all EU institutions.

The European Parliament has not yet implemented Spain's request because of a Conservative blocking majority in its ' Bureau ' which deals with the organisation of parliament's work and is made up of the President and 14 Vice Presidents of the Parliament. Following a request by the Jill Evans' parliamentary Group, the Conference of Presidents of the political groups has now requested that this be looked at again and it will be reconsidered on July 3rd.

Diwedd/Ends.