Fast-track deal in sight on EU language plan

Date: 01/06/2000

By John Shelley

AN innovative fast-track method for getting proposals through the EU's institutions is being used to get swift agreement to designate 2001 as the European Year of Languages.

Union education ministers are expected to approve plans to dedicate next year to improving language awareness early next month. Officials say an agreement has been made possible by taking advantage of a previously untried strategy for speeding up the co-decision procedure - the decision-making process used in areas where Union governments and the European Parliament share power.

Normally decisions under the co-decision procedure are shunted back and forth between member states before an agreement is reached.

But Portuguese centre-right MEP Vasco Graça Moura, the Parliament's rapporteur on the year of languages plan, says he has been able to reduce the timeframe by at least six months.

This has been done by drawing up and modifying his report in close unofficial cooperation with the Portuguese presidency, the Commission and MEPs. As a result, his proposal only needed one reading in Parliament, rather than two, and avoided the danger of lengthy conciliation talks.

Diplomats have praised this approach and say it could be used for other relatively uncontroversial decisions, radically cutting the implementation time.

"It seems to have been the first time that these informal possibilities have been explored so everybody was very surprised that it worked," said Graça Moura. "There are probably many issues in which it would be possible to work in this way."

Ministers are expected to approve a budget of €10 million for Year of Languages when they meet on 8 June. The initiative is aimed at encouraging EU citizens to learn another language and raise awareness of Europe's linguistic diversity.

An innovative fast-track method for getting proposals through the EU's institutions is being used to get swift agreement to designate 2001 as the European Year of Languages.