The General Affairs Council of the European Union will debate again tomorrow the official status of Catalan in European institutions. The Minister for Foreign Action and European Union, Meritxell Serret i Aleu, asserted today from Mons, Belgium, that the Government will apply “maximum pressure” on the Spanish government to “set in motion diplomatic machinery so that the official status of Catalan in European institutions becomes a reality as soon as possible”.

At the European summit organised by the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU in Mons, Belgium, where Minister Serret engaged in a busy schedule of European contacts, the Minister for Foreign Action emphasised that the memorandum distributed by the Spanish government to the member states in defence of the official status of Catalan at tomorrow’s meeting of the General Affairs Council of the EU are arguments that the Government of Catalonia has conveyed from day one. “We welcome the move, but we reiterate that it could have been made earlier,” she stressed.

Furthermore, the minister recalled that the government has coordinated efforts, from the outset, with the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European institutions and the Belgian presidency to share arguments and data with the aim of dispelling doubts and making the proposal more robust in order to move towards unanimity. “We welcome the fact that the Belgian presidency of the EU Council is keeping this issue on the agenda, as we have been working on it for the last few months,” Serret stressed.

In parallel to the proposal for the official status of Catalan in European institutions, Serret also referred to Catalan as a working language at the European Parliament. “We urge the Spanish government to put the proposal for Catalan to be a working language at the European Parliament to a vote,” said Serret, who added that “it must be done before the end of this term of office”.

“They are two necessary proposals that have to be worked on in parallel and we want them to become a reality as soon as possible,” concluded Serret.

Establishing partnerships for the macroregion

At the European summit of the Belgian presidency held in Mons, Serret engaged in a busy schedule of contacts with European partners, and one of the central themes was the promotion of the Mediterranean macroregion. The Minister for Foreign Action met with the French Minister Delegate for Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion, Dominique Faure, from whom she explicitly requested the support of the French government for the project. “The Mediterranean macroregion must help us to unite efforts to make a more resilient Mediterranean in the face of climate change,” Serret emphasised.

The meeting with Faure also included Loïg Chesnais-Girard, President of the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions (CPMR); Jean-Pierre Colin, Vice-President of the Provence-Alps-Côte d’Azur Region and Marie-Antoinette Maupertuis, President of the Assembly of Corsica.

Currently, the macroregional project, led by Catalonia and the French region of Provence-Alps-Côte d’Azur, is already receiving support from countries such as Italy and Spain, as demonstrated at the Summit for the Mediterranean Macroregion, held at the Palau de la Generalitat last November.