The European Comission figures the annual cost of add the use of Catalan, Basque and Galician to the regulation that recognizes the official languages ​​of the European Union in some 132 millionaccording to Brussels’ “preliminary estimate”, based on experience with other languages.

“According to this preliminary estimate, The cost is around 44 million euros per year and languageso in total it would be about 132 million euros for the three languages,” the community spokesperson for Budgets told Europa Press, Balazs Ujvari.

The community Executive has carried out a “preliminary evaluation”but it will not be able to complete a “complete financial analysis”, warns the spokesperson, until the Council takes a formal position on Spain’s request and the Government details the “transitional regime” it proposes to deploy Catalan first and later the others. two co-official languages.

This report is part of the information that the Government will present to the rest of the European Union partners to defend the official status of the three languages ​​in a new discussion point included in the agenda for next Tuesday of the Council of Ministers of General Affairs of the EU. .

It is the last Council in which Spain, as the outgoing presidency, will be able to set the agenda before Belgium takes over in January.

The matter appears as a “decision” point on the ministers’ agenda, something that has caused “surprise” in many delegationsaccording to several senior diplomats, who insist that they do not have the necessary information to reflect on the substance of the issue, not only with respect to its financial impact – which Spain has said it will fully assume – but also its legal and practical consequences. for the rest of the regions.

At the end of last October, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, Jose Manuel Albares, already warned that it would take at least “two or three months” to have the impact evaluations required by the rest of the member states. The European Commission, for its part, was willing to “coordinate” the studies with the rest of the community institutions, in which the impact of going from 24 to 27 official languages ​​would also have to be estimated.