El reconeixement de la diversitat lingüística a la Carta dels drets fonamentals de la Unió Europea

Resum

The protection of European Union minority and regional languages is and has been an issue to which European institutions have devoted their attention in various resolutions. The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (1992) urged member states to implement a series of policies to promote intercultural events and multilingualism. Community legislation up to now has tended to merely defend and promote language diversity as part of Europe's cultural heritage, without, however, going so far as to implement concrete measures with a basis in law to guarantee the use of minority languages. Mandating the use of a minority language could constitute a restriction of individual freedoms, according to Community legislation. The cfreu, which was passed in Nice on December 7, 2000, emphasizes respect for language diversity, but does not consider minority rights to be fundamental. Consequently, the Charter follows the customary line of promoting and respecting regional languages, without, however, constituting a legal basis for upholding claims from some regional languages, such as Catalan, to be granted official Community language status. Nevertheless, the existence of a legal recognition of the phenomenon of language diversity represents an invitation to member states and institutions to take measures to respect the use of regional languages in legislative, administrative and regulatory functions. In the future, such measures may lead to improvements and more incisive legislation.