<The President of the Government of Catalonia, Pere Aragonès i Garcia, today welcomed the fact that the process of making Catalan official in the European Union is continuing. "We welcome the fact that the process is continuing, that the debate is still alive today and that there has been no veto on the advancement of Catalan".

"We stand before a historic opportunity, the doors are still open and now we need to definitively conclude this matter in the coming weeks", he said at the meeting with the Government delegates abroad, the directors and managers of ACCIÓ's offices and the Ramon Llull Institute, who are in Barcelona to take part in the twice-yearly meeting to coordinate the Government’s foreign action.

The President argued that the official status of Catalan in the European Union is a "political question", not a technical or budgetary one, and that it should serve to correct a "historical anomaly" and for the Catalan language to be recognised by the European institutions.

He also highlighted the efforts being made by the Catalan Government to make Catalan official, such as the media campaign and the contact that has been made through the network of delegations of the Government of Catalonia with all the governments of the European Union. In this respect, he encouraged Catalan Government representatives abroad to "continue generating alliances so that this process that is under way culminates successfully”.

"We will redouble our diplomatic efforts to defend the full official status of Catalan in Europe, and at the same time we will be as demanding as possible of the Spanish government to fulfil its commitments," he concluded.

Aragonès assured that the meeting with all the representatives of the Government of Catalonia abroad illustrates the power of Catalan foreign action. He praised the work being done to deploy the Catalan Government's foreign action network, which has 21 delegations covering 72 countries around the world, the highest number in history.

He stressed that this is particularly relevant given that six years ago Spain tried to put an end to this network with the application of Article 155. “There is no other stateless nation in the world that has this powerful network of international representation,” he added.

Aragonès pointed out that the next objectives are to increase Catalonia's presence in Asia and Africa. This will be done by completing the setting up of the Japan and Korea delegations in the coming months, with a view to establishing a presence in Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent, and by deploying the delegations in West and Southern Africa, with plans to also cover East Africa in the coming months.

Furthermore, he praised the work of ACCIÓ's offices abroad, which in the last 35 years have supported 26,000 internationalisation projects of Catalan companies and which have become an "indispensable collaborator in the internationalisation of the Catalan economy".

He also thanked the Institut Ramon Llull for its work "to spread Catalan culture and language everywhere", through cultural promotion, teaching and dissemination projects for Catalan creators and stays abroad for researchers.