Dutch are told to watch their language

Date: 30/01/1997

By Simon Coss

FLANDERS has fired the latest shot in the long-running battle over the Union's language regime by urging the Netherlands not to ignore the rights of Europe's estimated 20 million Dutch and Flemish speakers during its six-month EU presidency.

Luc van den Brande, minister-president of the Belgian Flemish government, has told Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok that now is the perfect time to ensure that existing rules on the use of Dutch in official EU meetings are adhered to.

Flemish is essentially a Dutch dialect and the move reflects not only the determination of the Union's smaller member states to maintain the EU's linguistic diversity, but also the fears of Belgium's Flemish community that its language is under threat from the French-speaking parts of the country.

Belgian officials say the continued use of all 11 official Union languages is essential to preserve its democratic legitimacy.

“Dutch-speaking officials will often speak English in order to ease working practices in meetings. What we are saying is that we have the right to translation and we should use it. If the European institutions claim to be truly democratic, citizens have the right to be addressed in their own language,” said a Van den Brande aide.

The Belgian minister's current crusade was apparently sparked by a Dutch government memo released last November.

It was in that memorandum that The Hague set out the main themes of its forthcoming EU presidency, but made no mention at all of the Dutch language issue.

Dutch is the sixth most commonly spoken language in the Union after English, French, German, Italian and Spanish, and the Flemish government has already published a list of five 'guidelines' for all Dutch-speaking officials taking part in formal meetings.

These state that Dutch speakers should speak the language at all ministerial-level meetings of the Council of Ministers, as well as in meetings of officials of the European Commission or Council of Ministers in which all EU member states participate.

If interpretation is not available, say the guidelines, officials should inform the chairman, who must ensure it is provided for the next session. If this does not happen,

Dutch speakers should only participate in discussions which concern them directly.

The guidelines also state that at meetings where fewer than 15 member states take part, but where it is decided to add a fourth and fifth language (after the 'normal' working languages of English, French and German), Dutch speakers must automatically insist that one of those languages is Dutch.

If their demands are ignored, they should again confine themselves to participating only in those discussions which concern them directly.

Finally, Dutch speakers must demand Dutch translations of all working documents to be produced after a particular meeting before proceeding to the next stage of talks. If this does not happen, the 'work-to-rule' tactic should again be deployed.