WRITTEN QUESTION P-0025/02 by Eija-Riitta Korhola (PPE-DE) to the Commission. Supporting bilingualism through research in the EU.
Date: 2002-01-14
Institutions: European Parliament, Provisional data
Subjects: EU Member State, EU financing, EU research policy, bilingualism, region, research programme, research project, social sciences

20.6.2002

EN

Official Journal of the European Communities

C 147 E/231

(2002/C 147 E/245)

WRITTEN QUESTION P-0025/02

by Eija-Riitta Korhola (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(14 January 2002)

Subject: Supporting bilingualism through research in the EU

There are many regions in the EU which vividly demonstrate two languages operating side by side. In Italy,
for example, the official language is Italian, but German is spoken in Southern Tyrol, French in the Val
d’Aosta, Slovene in Trieste and Gorizia and even Romansh in some South Tyrolean valleys. Many other
examples could be cited.

In Finland the region around Pietarsaari (Jakobstad) has shown in many ways how bilingualism can be
made to work in practice and become a rich resource from which the whole community can benefit. The
Pietarsaari area is said to be one of the must successful EU regions in terms of exploiting its bilingualism.

Are any research programmes under way in the EU on bilingual regions? Does the Commission feel that
such research ought to be organised? Would the Commission consider it useful to subsidise, for example,
the research about to be launched by the Pietarsaari unit of Åbo Akademi (the Swedish-speaking University
of Turku) investigating the wider significance of bilingual areas for the Member States and the EU as a
whole, and would it be possible in that case to use Community resources to organise research?

Answer given by Mrs Reding on behalf of the Commission

(11 February 2002)

The Key Action improving the socio-economic knowledge base of the Fifth Framework Programme for
Research and Technological Development (RTD), and its predecessor (the targeted socio-economic research
programme of the Fourth Framework Programme) support European researchers in the social sciences and
humanities. Within these activities, there are no projects dedicated specifically to the issue of bilingualism.

The most relevant research project in relation to bilingual regions is entitled Border discourse: changing
identities, changing nations, changing stories in European border communities. This is an ongoing project
funded under the Key Action ‘improving the socio-economic knowledge base’ in which border regions are
examined from the perspective of identity formation (where language is one of the components).

The only way in which research is funded by the Commission is on a competitive basis through Calls for
Proposals. The 15 January 2002 was the deadline for the last Call for Proposals of the Key Action
Improving the Socio-Economic Knowledge Base of the Fifth Framework Programme.

In the next framework programme, the social sciences and the humanities will be brought together under
Priority 7 ‘Citizens and governance in a knowledge-based society’ and will be given a high importance. In
this context, research projects on culture and language issues could be funded.

In the area of education, the Commission’s Socrates Programme actively supports projects that develop
ways of teaching school or university subjects through the medium of a foreign language (content and
language integrated learning), thereby encouraging bilingualism from an early age. This approach is used in
mono-lingual regions as well as bilingual ones. Such projects are also funded on a competitive basis
through Calls for Proposals.