EP travel to Catalonia to assess language immersion policy in education

USPA NEWS - From this Monday, December 18, to Wednesday, December 20, a delegation of the European Parliament Petitions committee will be in Catalonia (North East of Spain) to look into the language immersion model applied in the local education system.

Twelve MEPs, led by Yana Toom (Renew, EE), will meet with the petitioners who brought their case to the committee, representatives of pupils’ families and teachers, NGOs and other civil society organisations, as well as with judges and regional authorities. They will also visit two schools that apply different language immersion levels.

The delegation, integrated for MEPs from several European countries and six Spanish MEPs, comes as a follow-up to several petitions received and discussed by the committee regarding the education model based in language immersion in place in Catalonia, namely: petition 0858/2017, by the Assembly for bilingual schools, on the impact of the immersion in Catalan for families moving to the region; petition 0650/2022 on judicial precautionary measures regarding schooling in Spanish in Catalonia, and petition 0826/2022 about alleged non-compliance by Catalan regional authorities to allow Spanish teaching in local schools.

This Fact-Finding Visit (FFV) is organized in order to follow-up on the several petitions debated by the Committee on Petitions on the language immersion model in Catalonia. The aim of the visit is to inspect in situ its impact on families moving to and residing in the region, as well as on multilingualism and non-discrimination in compliance with the principle of the Rule of Law, and to meet with the petitioners and the regional authorities.