Shouting, tension and disputes. This was the climate that prevailed in the Petitions Committee of the European Parliament this Wednesday, as it debated the controversial report from the mission of MEPs hostile to the linguistic immersion policy in Catalonia, whose text demands equivalence of usage with Spanish language and denounces cases of "social exclusion, intimidation and bullying against children and parents" who advocate for more teaching hours of Spanish in schools. The beginning of the session was marked by requests from several MEPs, attached to the Socialists, Greens and Left parliamentary groups, to postpone the debate until the next meeting of the organ, given that they had received the report on Tuesday at 4pm and in English only.
These parliamentarians denounced the "partiality" of the president of the committee, Dolors Montserrat (People's Party), and considered it a "scandal" that "the right of MEPs to work in their own language has been violated" and, moreover, in a debate which is itself about multilingualism. Montserrat ignored these statements and responded that requests to change the agenda must be formally communicated 24 hours before the meeting, which in turn was answered by MEPs, who noted that the report had been received less than 24 hours before the meeting was due. In fact, those who advocated postponing the debate reported that, after several minutes of discussion, several members from the PP joined the session to put pressure on those attending attendees so that the point would be passed. Once debate began, the Catalan pro-independence parties, the Socialists, the Ggreens and the European Left denounced the "instrumentalization" of the committee by Dolors Montserrat and the "lack of impartiality" of the mission sent to Catalonia on December 18th-20th, made up only of European deputies from the right and the extreme right - the European PP, Liberal and Conservative groups, led by their Spanish representatives from the PP, Ciudadanos (Cs) and Vox.
ERC sees it as a "media spectacle" and Junts warns that "without immersion, Catalan will regress irreversibly"
Throughout the debate, there were interventions from Catalan Republican Left (ERC) representative Diana Riba, and Together for Catalonia (Junts) MEP Toni Comín. Riba regretted the "media spectacle" experienced during the committee meeting, with several eye-opening moments, and denounced the "use of the committee for political campaigning" by the right and the far right: "The request for this mission was made by a person close to Dolors Montserrat who stood on the PP electoral list in Catalonia". The Republican MEP added that the European Commission made it clear in 2017 that they do not have the powers to embark on such a mission and demanded explanations from the PP, Vox and Cs for "instrumentalizing" the Petitions Committee and "disrespecting all Europeans". In turn, Toni Comín accused Montserrat of "damaging the reputation and contributing to the disrepute of the Committee" and asked for more "impartiality". The Junts MEP ruled against the report, as he stated that "all the studies confirm that the Catalan language is in decline". In this regard, he warned that "without the immersion system, Catalan will irreversibly decline" and criticized those who "pretend to defend bilingualism": "In reality, what they want is for Catalan society to be monolingual".
Yana Toom, mission member, stands out from her colleagues and denounces "personal interests"
During the debate, three of the MEPs who were part of the mission opposed to the Catalan language took part. First to speak was the mission president, the Estonian MEP Yana Toom (from Liberals group), who emphasized the main conclusions of the report and called for "more protection" for families who want more Spanish in schools and measures against "any hate speech". According to Toom, the current situation of the education system in Catalonia "goes against the inclusion and rights" of students who want more Spanish. In turn, fellow mission member, German MEP Peter Jahr (EPP group), asked for the court ruling for a 25% Spanish quota to be applied.
On the other hand, the Italian Maria Angela Danzi, a non-attached MEP and a member of the 5 Star Movement, distanced herself from the conclusions of her fellow committee members. Danzi accused the mission of a "lack of impartiality" for not including members of the Green and Socialist groups and pointed to "personal interests": "I was taught that, when there is a personal interest, there is the mandatory abstention, and there has been a clear instrumentalization of this issue". The Italian MEP pointed out that Spain's major problem is that the judiciary has not been renewed, she declared that she does not share "several of the report's conclusions" and pointed out that "a court sentence for a single student can increase the level of hostility if it involves changing the entire curriculum."
From the Socialist group, Spanish MEP Cristina Maestre described it as "disrespectful" that the report had been leaked to the media earlier while MEPs received it with such a delay. Regarding the mission, Maestre recalled that her group did not participate because there was "no minimal compliance with the rules". Regarding the position of the Spanish Socialists (PSOE), she emphasized that they support "compliance with court rulings", but that it is "incomprehensible" that the European Commission should tell a member state "what to do about an exclusive competence of its own", which is the status of language: "They are looking the other way once again and not respecting the treaties". Esther Sanz, from Podemos, highlighted that Catalan is among the "linguistic and cultural minorities" in Europe and criticized the fact that the mission sought a headline that says that "Castilian is in danger in Catalonia": "That is false and shameful. In the last 15 years, in fact, the use of Spanish has increased in Catalonia." At the other extreme, the representative of Ciudadanos, Maite Pagazaurtundúa, argued that her party wants a "bilingual and balanced system", while Jorge Buxadé (Vox) stated that immersion is "a model of linguistic apartheid".
After this first noisy debate, a period is opens at which amendments to the report can be submitted, until March 1st, and the final vote will take place on March 19th. Following the complaints about the report only being available in English, Dolors Montserrat asserted that this Thursday it will be available in Spanish, German and Polish, and that on the 27th it will be available in all the official languages of the Union European.