Manifesto for European languages

Communications within Europe - the challenge

Languages and international skills are now more important than ever

As we move into the 21st century, mobility and adaptability have become absolute requisites. Communicating across the old national frontiers is now a key skill. To meet this challenge, we need appropriate tools.

Using our inborn ability to speak several languages

It is wrong to assume that any one country has only one language, or that one international language can provide for all needs for communication. Europe, like each of its constituent countries, is a multilingual space. And throughout the world, the vast majority of people speak more than one language.

Experiencing the cultural wealth of our various countries and living in close neighbourliness

The European experience is one of diversity: diversity of traditions, diversity of cultures and diversity of languages as vehicles for thought, creativity and communication It is also a shared: a community of values and beliefs, the most crucial of which are democracy, human rights and respect for others.

Europe has the resources to assert an identity of a plural kind, and this is an asset that lends a quite different meaning to the phrase 'globalisation'.

Understanding and speaking several languages - a key to the future

Creating a culture in which using several languages is the norm

We all want to be ready for the future Our world is one of mobility and diversity, we have enormous potential for learning, and acquiring skills in communication is our birthright

Plurilingualism can help prevent some people being excluded from the community. It can save our societies from becoming conglomerates of groups closed in on themselves. Learning languages is an acceptance of mutual respect and enrichment.

Learning languages and improving one's chances

Many Europeans already consider it natural to work and train for several years in another country. The ability to communicate with other cultures is inscreasingly a basic skill, on a par with reading, writing, mathematics and access to information technology.

How to set about doing it

The aim - to communicate

There are many ways of achieving this, and they just need to be activated.

- instilling pluringualism into children as soon as they start school, confirming it throughout their school years, and reinforcing it in adult training so that it becomes a part of lifelong learning;

- promoting direct contacts with other countries at an early age, helping towards equal access to mobility in education and training (through exchanges, the internet, and social and professional contacts);

- recognising and giving credit for periods spent abroad;

- above all, making the general public aware of the value of language learning.

Don't be afraid of speaking to some one in another language.

All the languages spoken in Europe are our heritage