European Year of Languages 2001

The European Year of Languages is a joint Council of Europe and European Union initiative. The initiative is also supported by UNESCO. It is a celebration of languages and language learning involving all 47 countries associated with the Council of Europe, as well as EU member states.

Euroscola at the European Parliament

Esperanto speaking students showed how Esperanto works, when they took part in a session of the European Parliament for secondary school pupils.

Euroscola is a role-playing game organised by the European Parilament to promote the European Union among high-school pupils. On 8 - 10 accasions per year, about 600 young people from various member countries meet for a day in Strasburg or Brussels to discuss and vote on current questions before the Union, just as the real parlamentarians do. The year 2001 has been designated "European Year of Languages", and one question under discussion is the role of languages in the expanding EU. Do the people of the EU want a single official language?

Students who had learned Esperanto in school have taken part. In one session in 2001, 171 esperanto speaking pupils took part, and 37 of them were selected for the debating teams. The rest joined the audience to watch the debates.

There were seven Esperanto groups. They were from Croatia, France, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Romania and Sweden. Each group had between four and six members. Gabriele Corsetti (Italy) was a candidate for the position of president for the day. His speech as candidate was interpreted into French by another member of the team, Xavier Dewidehem (France), and from French into the other languages by the official intepreters. Gabriele received 161 votes, coming in fourth place.

A common language for understanding?

The Esperanto teams agreed on a resolution on this question. It emphased the role of Esperanto in preventing any single language from taking over in Europe and to facilitate the learning of other languages. They put forward their proposal in speeches. This was followed by consultation with other groups, as happens in the real European Parliament.

In the debate some speakers agreed that a single official language would be practical, but there was no agreement on which language to choose. According to the final resolution all languages and cultures in the EU must be supported and protected, and each European should learn at least two foreign languages.

The importance of the day was that many of the other students in the meeting were hearing Esperanto for the first time, and heard it spoken by people their own age. Their interest was visible, as was the interest of the television and the visiting general public. (About 35000 people visited the parliament that day.