92002E0025

WRITTEN QUESTION P-0025/02

by Eija-Riitta Korhola (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(14 January 2002)

Subject: Supporting bilingualism through research in the EU

There are many regions in the EU which vividly demonstrate two languages operating side by side. In Italy, for example, the official language is Italian, but German is spoken in Southern Tyrol, French in the Val d'Aosta, Slovene in Trieste and Gorizia and even Romansh in some South Tyrolean valleys. Many other examples could be cited.

In Finland the region around Pietarsaari (Jakobstad) has shown in many ways how bilingualism can be made to work in practice and become a rich resource from which the whole community can benefit. The Pietarsaari area is said to be one of the must successful EU regions in terms of exploiting its bilingualism.

Are any research programmes under way in the EU on bilingual regions? Does the Commission feel that such research ought to be organised? Would the Commission consider it useful to subsidise, for example, the research about to be launched by the Pietarsaari unit of Åbo Akademi (the Swedish-speaking University of Turku) investigating the wider significance of bilingual areas for the Member States and the EU as a whole, and would it be possible in that case to use Community resources to organise research?

Answer given by Mrs Reding on behalf of the Commission

(11 February 2002)

The Key Action improving the socio-economic knowledge base of the Fifth Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (RTD), and its predecessor (the targeted socio-economic research programme of the Fourth Framework Programme) support European researchers in the social sciences and humanities. Within these activities, there are no projects dedicated specifically to the issue of bilingualism.

The most relevant research project in relation to bilingual regions is entitled Border discourse: changing identities, changing nations, changing stories in European border communities. This is an ongoing project funded under the Key Action improving the socio-economic knowledge base in which border regions are examined from the perspective of identity formation (where language is one of the components).

The only way in which research is funded by the Commission is on a competitive basis through Calls for Proposals. The 15 January 2002 was the deadline for the last Call for Proposals of the Key Action Improving the Socio-Economic Knowledge Base of the Fifth Framework Programme.

In the next framework programme, the social sciences and the humanities will be brought together under Priority 7 Citizens and governance in a knowledge-based society and will be given a high importance. In this context, research projects on culture and language issues could be funded.

In the area of education, the Commission's Socrates Programme actively supports projects that develop ways of teaching school or university subjects through the medium of a foreign language (content and language integrated learning), thereby encouraging bilingualism from an early age. This approach is used in mono-lingual regions as well as bilingual ones. Such projects are also funded on a competitive basis through Calls for Proposals.