Verbatim report of proceedings

Wednesday, 14 January 2004 - Strasbourg

Vote

  Turco (NI), in writing. – (IT) Following on from Mr Cappato’s explanation of vote, I must underline the importance of the OSCE, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The OSCE promotes security in all ways other than direct armed intervention, and therefore makes every effort to promote respect for cultural and linguistic diversity. Two institutions operate within the OSCE to achieve this: the High Commissioner on National Minorities and the Representative on Freedom of the Media, who have continually been directing their attention to the subject of languages. Recently, at their meeting in Maastricht in December 2003, the foreign ministers of the OSCE countries adopted a decision on tolerance – Decision 4/03. Article 10 refers to the High Commissioner on National Minorities and his recommendations on education and languages, including in radio and television broadcasting. The decision also refers to the recommendations on this subject by the Representative on Freedom of the Media, the text of which can be found at www.osce.org. In 2002 and 2003 he carried out a thorough study on the media in multilingual societies, taking five countries as examples: Luxembourg, Switzerland, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Moldova and Serbia-Montenegro.

On 13 and 14 September the OSCE is organising a conference on racism and xenophobia, to be held in Brussels, during which I hope the subject of linguistic diversity will be addressed.