MINELRES: EBLUL: New Member State Committee Established in Portugal

[MINELRES moderator]

Original sender: Margret Oberhofer <margret@eblul.org>


PRESS RELEASE

NEW EBLUL-MEMBER STATE COMMITTEE ESTABLISHED IN PORTUGAL

Brussels, 02.05.2002 � What happened last weekend in Miranda de Douro
in Portugal was no obvious event: A new Member State Committee (MSC)
of the European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages (EBLUL) was
established on the �V International Symposium on European languages
and legislation�.

This is not so self-evident when considering that some countries in
the European Union still hesitate to acknowledge their linguistic
minorities. Even though most of them have signed and ratified official
agreements to safeguard and promote these languages, the practical
implementation often lags behind. �It also does not seem morally
correct that the EU requests Candidate Countries to have a minority
standard which some EU- Member States do not fulfil�, says Bojan
Brezigar, President of EBLUL. �Therefore it�s very important that the
EU Member States regulate the situation on the linguistic minorities
in their own country before they face the enlargement of the Union and
the complex minority situation there�.

The establishment of a new EBLUL MSC can be considered as a positive
sign in the right direction. �We are very happy about this, because
after the long and difficult process of establishing a MSC in Greece
in January 2002, EBLUL now has national representation in all Member
States of the European Union�, says Brezigar.

The announcement of a new MSC in Portugal was made by Amadeu Jos�
Ferrira, President of the Associacon de Lhengua Mirandes (Association
for the Mirandese Language) and Domingos Raposo from the Teacher
Association, on behalf of different organisations representing
Mirandese. They agreed in the presence of the Presidents of EBLUL�s
MSC from Italy, Spain, Great Britain and Germany to take the necessary
administrative steps for becoming a member in EBLUL.

Mirandese is spoken by around 12 000 people in the province of
Breganza in northeastern Portugal, close to the Spanish border. It�s
an official language in Portugal since September 17th 1998, when the
national Parliament approved a new law recognising it. After the
recognition, the language is protected and is taught in local schools
and used at some levels in administration as well as in the Assembly
of the Republic.

EUROPEAN BUREAU FOR
LESSER USED LANGUAGES (EBLUL)
www.eblul.org

Rue Saint-Josse 49/Sint-Jooststraat 49
B-1210 Bruxelles/Brussel

TEL: 0032/2/ 250 31 64
FAX: 0032/2/ 218 19 74