Irish language experience in EU highlights challenges for Catalan

In August 2023, Spain, holding the presidency of the Council of the European Union, sent a letter to other member states requesting that Catalan, Basque, and Galician be granted official EU language status.

Progress on the issue to date has been incremental, and the experience of the last language to be granted official status in the EU, Irish, underscores the challenges Catalan may face.

Ireland joined the bloc in 1973, but it was not until 2005 that it formally requested the EU Council recognize Irish as an official language.

In 2007, member states approved the request, but a lack of translators and interpreters – Irish has fewer than 200,000 regular speakers – meant the language wasn't made official in practice until 2022.

Even now, the European Parliament applies an exception to Irish, guaranteeing its translation only in plenary sessions, but not for all official documents or in other contexts, such as press conferences.

Differences between Catalan and Irish

There are major differences in the cases of Catalan and Irish.

The lack of translators which continues to hamper efforts to fully implement Irish's official status should not pose a problem for Catalan. 

According to data from the Irish government, only 195,000 people living in Ireland claimed to be able to speak the language fully.

Catalan speakers on the other hand number around 10 million. 

But Irish holds a key advantage over Catalan in the EU, being an official language of a member state, as Irish MEP Cynthia Ní Mhurchú explained to the Catalan News Agency.

"I understand any person who wishes to use their native tongue, but we have to look at the context. It's in the European union. That comes with rules and regulations," Ní Mhurchú, of Renew Europe, said.

Catalonia is not "a separate country or member state of the European Union. Ireland is, and it does have its own official language," she added.