Themes on Linguistic Diversity Encountered in the Plenary Debates of the European Parliament 2000 - 2003
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Themes on Linguistic Diversity Encountered in the Plenary Debates of the European Parliament 2000 - 2003 i ii THEMES ON LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY ENCOUNTERED IN THE PLENARY DEBATES OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT 2000 – 2003 A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in European Studies at the University of Canterbury GARTH JOHN WILSON National Centre for Research on Europe University of Canterbury May 2009 iii iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to all the staff – academic and administrative – of the National Centre for Research on Europe for all the willing assistance given to me during my time writing this thesis. The cheerful and positive “team” atmosphere prevalent at the Centre has been a source of encouragement throughout my time at the University of Canterbury. Particular thanks are due, first and foremost, to Professor Martin Holland, Director of the Centre and also my supervisor. These thanks are due for all his guidance and for his ready willingness to find time to discuss matters related to my thesis with me amid his very busy schedule of research, teaching and all those trips he undertakes to meetings and conferences within New Zealand and overseas. The knowledge and experience that he has shared have been invaluable to me, and his regular feedback has inspired me to keep going to the “end”! He has created in the Centre a stimulating environment in which to do research. Thanks are due also to Dr Natalia Chaban, the Deputy Director of the Centre, for the support and positive encouragement she has freely given to me throughout. I also wish to acknowledge two other scholars who were instrumental in setting me on a course that would eventually lead to a conclusion in the form of this thesis. Dr Cris Shore was helpful in refining my initial ideas into a manageable topic and away from what he termed at the time enough ideas for four or five PhDs and several lifetimes! Dr Jim Miller provided much encouragement and extensive advice for a whole year of his stay in New Zealand. Dr Miller’s willingness to read and comment upon my assessment of the academic literature related to my topic and on my initial conclusions as to the themes emerging from the plenary debates of the European Parliament provided a foundation on which I could build the remainder of the thesis. v CONTENTS Chapter One – Introduction 1 Chapter Two – Linguistic diversity – The current academic debate 32 Chapter Three – Talking the talk on linguistic diversity 61 Chapter Four – Walking the walk in and around Parliament 90 Chapter Five – Santa Claus and minority indigenous languages within the European Union 127 Chapter Six – Desire or Demand – Pronouncements from Members of the European Parliament on the state of minority indigenous languages in non-Member States 172 Chapter Seven – Linguistic Diversity and the Plenary Debates 2000 – 2003: Conclusions and Reflections 206 vi LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1 European Parliament elections 1999: Number of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) for each Member State, Population per MEP for each Member State, and voter turnout percentage in each Member State 10 Table 1.2 Political Groups resulting from the 1999 elections and as at 16 September 2002 13 Table 3.1 Major contributors to the debates on the social and economic benefits of multilingualism 62 Table 4.1 Major contributors to the debates on for and against the use of one language as the preferred method of communication 91 Table 5.1 Major contributors to the debates on the use of regional and minority autochthonous languages 128 Table 6.1 Major contributors to the debates on the use of minority autochthonous languages in non-Member States 173 Table 7.1 Most prolific contributors on issues of linguistic diversity to the plenary debates 2000 – 2003 209 Table 7.2 Participation percentage of contributions by political groups on issues of linguistic diversity to the plenary debates 2000 – 2003 209 *** BIBLIOGRAPHY 269 *** APPENDICES Appendix 1 The 552 Selected Verbali from the Plenary Debates 2000 – 2003 277 Appendix 2 The Official Languages of the European Union 2008 290 Appendix 3 Presidencies of the European Council 2000 – 2003 291 vii ABSTRACT This research focuses on contributions – oral and written – on the topic of linguistic diversity made by Members of the European Parliament during the plenary sessions from 2000 to 2003 inclusive and analyses the attitudes expressed by Members towards the concept of linguistic diversity, particularly as it applies to the national languages and the regional autochthonous languages of Member States. The analysis is set within a framework consisting of contemporary academic work and the classic work by Johann Gottfried von Herder and the German Philosophen. The European Year of Languages 2001 was widely supported by the European Commission; but an important question seemed to be what significance, if any, did maintaining linguistic diversity have for Members of the European Parliament in the years immediately following 2001. This research set out to discover to what extent issues related to linguistic diversity were given expression to in the plenary debates from 2000 to 2003, the years corresponding essentially to the fifth parliamentary term. Was only lip service paid to linguistic diversity in the years 2000 – 2003? Or did the European Year of Languages focus the attention of parliamentarians from all political groups in an ongoing way on issues of language use and preservation in the European Union, especially since the Union was to be significantly enlarged by the addition of ten Member States on January 1, 2004? Did the MEPs recognise that there were social and economic benefits accruing from pursuing policies of linguistic diversity? How important was linguistic diversity to the essence of the European Union in the eyes of its Members of Parliament? To what extent did MEPs espouse the use of just one language as a preferred method of communication in and around the Parliament? How much respect was there for the regional and minority indigenous languages of the European Union? Did MEPs regard linguistic diversity as an important consideration in determining the suitability of other countries seeking accession? The research reviews the response from the Commission in subsequent years to the views articulated by the MEPs. Finally, are there lessons in any of this for New Zealand? viii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION Setting the Context The matter of language and identity is not out of the news for long in the European Union, even if the circumstances are not always like those that culminated in the dramatic events at a football stadium in Dunajská Streda/Dunaszerdahely late in 2008. On the first day of November in that year, in Dunajská Streda/Dunaszerdahely, a city of 20,000 and the centre of Slovakia’s Hungarian minority, which totals some 650,000, a football match was being played between a team from the Slovak capital Bratislava and one from Dunajská Streda/Dunaszerdahely. The game came to an abrupt halt after just seventeen minutes when Slovakian police officers started attacking Hungarian fans. Busloads of ethnic Hungarian football fans and neo-Nazis had travelled to the game in southern Slovakia. The incidents on that day, which led to considerable strain in the relationship between the Slovak and Hungarian governments, appear to be related to the Bratislava-based government wanting to limit the rights of the Hungarian minority. At least, that is how the Hungarian minority interpret events such as the removal of Hungarian place names and their replacement with Slovak equivalents and the decision by the government to order the use of geography textbooks that contain the names of towns and cities in Slovakian even though the rest of the text is in Hungarian. Gábor Hulkó, deputy mayor of Dunajská Streda/Dunaszerdahely, says people are being radicalised and are growing more nationalistic on both sides, and Oliver Ibolya, principal of a Hungarian school in the city, says that the Slovakian Government is ‘trying to kill our language’. “If the language disappears, so does the nation’s identity,” he told Deutsche Welle Television.1 1 On 8 October 2008, Hungary had lodged a complaint with the European Parliament over the same issue of place names in Slovakian in textbooks that were written for the Hungarian minority in Slovakia. The Slovak Minister of Education decided in January of 2008 that place names were to appear only in the official state language despite a government council for minorities putting forward a compromise of bilingual place names. The daily newspaper, Sme, editorialised that the ‘minority can only defend their rights if they manage to convince a majority of Slovak society, the media and politicians of their cause’.2 However, there was a change of heart in the government following the incidents at Dunajská Streda and Prime Minister Robert Fico promised, as reported in the Slovak Spectator 3, that Hungarian place names would be allowed in textbooks provided they were followed by the Slovak equivalent. Then, on 3 December, the largest political party in Slovakia’s ruling coalition, Smer, joined with opposition parties in parliament to pass an amendment allowing place names to be provided in the minority language plus the state language.4 In the area around Brussels, language issues are taken very seriously all the time. It was reported earlier in 2008 5 that a restaurant in the municipality of Overijse with a neon sign reading “Thai takeaway” was sent a reminder from the local council that the commune was Flemish and the official language Dutch. The restaurant was also requested to greet customers in Dutch instead of in French. Non-Dutch billboards in the area frequently suffer the fate, the report continued, of being spray-painted “Nederlands” by militant groups such as the Taal Aktie Komitee [TAK].