ACCESSIBILITY FOR REGIONAL OR MINORITY LANGUAGES TO EU PROGRAMMES. A PRACTICAL ASSESSMENT

Authorship: Helga Kuipers-Zandberg and Anna Fardau Schukking, Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning. Project coordinators: Cor van der Meer, Mercator Research Centre, and Vicent Climent-Ferrando, Government of Catalonia.

The Resolution of the European Parliament on a Community Charter of Regional Languages and Cultures and on a Charter of Rights of Ethnic Minorities (OJ C 287 9 November 1981) created a separate budget line to provide support to regional and minority languages (RMLs) (Gazzola, Grin, Häggman, & Moring, 2016). In 1998, however, this budget line for regional and minority languages was suspended as a result of a ruling delivered by the Court of Justice. This has had devastating effects for these languages, as the support for these languages is now provided through a broader framework (known as mainstreaming), along with other (non-language or non-regional/minority-language) related projects. RMLs had to face a new paradigm, that is, competing with more powerful languages for financial support as well as identifying new, unexplored possibilities for funding (as language is transversal and can be part of a larger objective when applying for funding), but lower chances of acceptance in competing with stronger and/or larger language communities.

This report represents a first attempt to investigate how funding opportunities for RMLs have been used and allocated over the period 2014-2020. It is the joint result between the Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning, hosted by the Fryske Akademy, and the Directorate-General for Language Policy of the Government of Catalonia, with the financial support of the European Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity.