Gaelic, the only minority language recognized as official in the EU

On the same day that Basque, Catalan and Galician become languages ​​normally used in the Congress of Deputies, although not officially, in Europe the First meeting to request that these three languages ​​be recognized as official languages ​​in the European Union.

In reality there are 24 official languages in the European Union: Bulgarian, Czech, Croatian, Danish, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Greek, Hungarian, English, Irish or Gaelic, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian and Swedish.

The last addition was the Gaelic, which became an official language of the European Union in 2022. Gaelic is an exceptional case. When Ireland joined the EU in 1973, it adopted English, the country’s most spoken language, but in 2005 demanded that Gaelic, also co-official throughout the country, be added.

Gaelic has barely 200,000 regular speakers, far below the number of people using Basque, for example, who speak it according to the latest sociolinguistic research by the Basque government. 680 629 people.

It is also worth noting that there are official languages ​​in the EU that have fewer speakers than Catalan or Basque, as is the case Maltese.

The first step, so that Basque, Catalan and Galician can become official languages ​​of the Union, is agreed by the Spanish Government, and it has already taken the first step. From today Twenty-seven will debate This is already happening, but it remains to be seen what will happen.

For now, the first veto has already arrived, and not from France or Italy, which have linguistic scenarios similar to Spanish: it is Sweden who has expressed his doubts about the standard.