BarcelonaThe Toulouse Court of Appeal ruled in favor of the judgment of the Montpellier court and on Thursday ratified the imposition of French as a priority language in the town councils of Northern Catalonia. The ruling has definitively overturned the regulation that prompted the Elna council to be able to intervene in Catalan as long as it was later translated into French and that other councils in the area imitated. According to the resolution, “authorizing the expression of charges directly in Catalan violates article 2 of the constitution by virtue of which French is the language of the Republic”.
The magistrates have concluded that the regional languages ”belong to the heritage of France” and that their use cannot be prohibited “neither in public nor private actions”, according to article 21 of the Law of August 4, 1994 Despite this, article 2 of its constitution says that “the use of French is mandatory for legal entities under public law”. For this reason, the judiciary has stated that the administrative documents of Northern Catalonia must also be drafted only in French.
However, the Toulouse Court has left the door open for the interventions to be translated into Catalan. He has admitted that the provisions of article 2 “do not prevent” the presentation of the councillors’ deliberations and interventions, “once expressed in French, can be translated into Catalan”.
According to sources consulted by the ARA, a meeting is taking place this afternoon between the mayors of the five affected municipalities – Elna, Els Banys, Portvendres, Tarerac and Sant Andreu de la Sureda – to decide the strategy against this new judicial offensive .
Elna’s attempt to defend Catalan
The final decision of the French judiciary comes more than two years after the Elna City Council changed its regulations in April 2022 to allow the use of Catalan in the interventions of its councillors. The reform of the regulations established the condition that interventions had to be translated into French. The municipality was a pioneer in the northern Catalan area in adopting a measure to defend the use of Catalan in France. Later, the towns of Els Banys, Portvendres, Tarerac and Sant Andreu de la Sureda imitated the decision.
The councilors of the area who opposed the change denounced it, and on April 18, 2023, the trial took place in the Administrative Court of Montpellier against the five councils. In May 2023, the judges ruled that the changes in the regulations of these localities should be annulled, but the mayors took the ruling to the Court of Appeal of Toulouse. His defeat has now been confirmed in court.
