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May 2003 – Nearly three years after the signature by the Republic of Italy of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, two parliamentary commissions (Commissions I and III) have been discussing for the last few weeks the act that will give the Charter full validity within the framework of the Italian legal system. The incorporation of Italy into the list of states having ratified the Charter, and where it is already in force, would strengthen the symbolic value of this Council of Europe instrument, given Italy’s political weight and because it is the state with the largest linguistic diversity in the EU. The bill on the ratification of the Charter follows the requirement laid down in Article 6 of the Italian Constitution, according to which the State undertakes to protect its linguistic minorities, and it is based on the basic text of reference in the Italian legal system: the framework act on the protection of historical linguistic minorities (Act no. 482/1999). According to this act, the officially recognised linguistic communities would be the Albanian, Catalan, German, Greek, Slovene, Friulan, Ladin, Occitan and Sardinian ones, although some sectors have claimed on the inclusion of other languages, such as that of the Tabarchin communities in Sardinia or that of the Gallo-Italic ones from Sicily and Basilicata. Related links ... Centro Internazionale sul Plurilinguismo |
