The European Schools will offer Catalan as an optional subject, as requested by the Spanish Government

Brussels – The Board of Governors of the European Schools accepted this Thursday the request of the Spanish Government to offer optional classes in Catalan to its students, mostly the children of officials from European institutions.

The agreement, as confirmed to the EFE Agency by community sources, stipulates that Spain will fully pay the salaries of the teachers who teach the subject.

The European Schools were created with the intention that the children of officials can receive an education in their mother tongue, as long as it is official in the EU, and learn, at the same time, four other EU languages throughout their schooling.

It is also offered as an optional subject, Other National Languages (ONL), for students whose countries of origin have more than one language in their school curriculum, such as Maltese or Irish, even though they are not official EU languages.

The agreement today allows Catalan to be considered as an ONL, so that students will be able to study it as an optional subject from the age of 4, regardless of the number of students who request it.

The sources specified that the pact of the Board of Governors of the European Schools – which was approved with the opposition of Italy – is independent of the discussion about the official status of Catalan, Basque, and Galician in the EU that the Spanish Government has promoted, still without success.

Various countries, including those from the east, maintain political, economic, and legal reservations about the official status of the Spanish co-official languages, and since Spain ceased to hold the rotating presidency of the EU in January 2024, no progress has been made in this matter.

At the same time, the Government is trying to ensure that MEPs who wish to do so can use any of these three languages in the European Parliament. (April 10).