WRITTEN QUESTION E-0095/99

by Gerardo Fernández-Albor (PPE) to the Commission

(27 January 1999)

Subject: Spanish as a compulsory school subject in the United States

The US Secretary of Education maintains that Spanish will form part of the core curriculum in the country's schools. This is one of the key goals which the Clinton Administration is aiming to achieve in the run-up to the year 2000, and Bill Clinton himself has said in a recent speech that US children should learn Spanish if it was not their mother tongue.

The Commission should consequently support and provide logistical back-up for the joint agreement between the United States and Spain to promote Spanish in the US, bearing in mind that the question will have an important role to play in enhancing the prestige of Community culture as a whole.

To what extent is the Commission willing to assist Spain in the task of spreading the influence of the Spanish language in the United States? How far can its solidarity be interpreted to mean that it will help to remedy such shortcomings as might arise?

Answer given by Mrs Cresson on behalf of the Commission

(8 March 1999)

As the Honourable Member is aware, the Community has made the choice of fostering multilinguism and it promotes it in particular in the framework of its programmes in the field of education and training, specially in the Lingua component of the Socrates programme. Priority is given to the less widely used or taught languages.

These programmes aim at promoting the teaching and the learning of languages within the Community. The promoting of Community languages in third countries is not one of the objectives of these programmes.

However, the 1995 Agreement between the Community and the United States (Council Decision of 23 October 1995, 95/487/EC(1) establishing a cooperation programme in higher education and vocational education and training) incorporates as one of its objectives to promote mutual understanding between the people of the Community and the United States including broader knowledge of their languages, cultures and institutions.

This programme is implemented mainly through projects developed jointly by consortia of Community and American universities. The guidelines for the annual calls for proposals clearly state the objective above, and also add when explaining the conditions required for the mobility of students within the joint projects that:

"A main objective of this Programme is to encourage and enable students to spend transatlantic study periods in a country or region in which they can experience a different academic, cultural and linguistic milieu from their home region. It is important, therefore, that measures to be taken by the partner institutions for the cultural and linguistic preparation of students be clearly addressed in the proposal. All students should receive cultural preparation for their foreign stay and all students spending a study period in a country whose official language is not their own should receive preparation in the host country's language both before and after departure".

Since 16 Spanish institutions take part in the 33 projects currently funded, this provides a non-negligible exposure to Spanish language and culture to both the American students studying in Spanish universities and the American universities sending them.

(1) OJ L 279, 22.11.1995.