Yes, because they’re two different legal entities, although they have the same values and objectives: to work to make Catalan a fully official language throughout the area where it is spoken and in the European institutions. If you have become a member of Plataforma per la Llengua since 1 February 2019, you are already automatically a member of Plataforma per la Llengua Europa at no additional cost. If you became a member before that date, all you need to do is fill in form confirm that you also want to be a member of Plataforma per la Llengua Europa, also at no additional cost.
Plataforma per la Llengua has decided to channel most of its international activity via Plataforma per la Llengua Europa because being in Brussels makes it easier for us to act in the European institutions and other international organisations working for multilingualism in Europe.
Brussels is the capital of Europe because it is the headquarters of the main European institutions. That means embassies from all over the world are established there and organisations and lobbies from all over Europe have permanent bases there, because they want to influence the drafting of future European laws and amendments to them.
On 31 October 2020, 12,030 organisations were officially entered in the European Commission’s transparency register, including 3,264 NGOs like ours.
There are 24 official languages in the European Union, but they don’t include Catalan. According to information from the European Commission, there are 50 million European citizens who speak a non-official language. That’s why it’s important to work with other organisations similar to ours based in Brussels that carry out most of their activities there, to ensure our voice is heard and demand that Euro-MPs and the European institutions take this situation into account.
For this reason, we have joined ELEN (the European Language Equality Network), FUEN (the Federal Union of European Nationalities) and NPLD (the Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity).
We also need to be present at meetings, events and seminars held by international organisations like the OSCE, the UN and the Council of Europe.
Your support will give us even more strength to get the Catalan voice heard in Europe. We will work to get international organisations to fully recognise the Catalan language, use it, promote it and, above all, guarantee Catalan-speaking citizens’ language rights in public and private.
Yes. To help us meet our objectives, you can make a financial contribution to our entity by filling in this form to become a member of Plataforma per la Llengua.
You can also make a one-off donation via bank transfer to the following account number: BE33 7360 5179 6246.
