Josean Izarra Vitoria
Victoria
Updated Tuesday, February 20, 2024-23:34
The Basque Government intends to impose Basque on the workers of the Basque administration's subcontractors and is putting pressure on 140,000 civil servants and public employees from all administrations and companies with more than 50% of public capital in Euskadi to use it as a "working language." » relegating to Spanish. One of the last decisions to be adopted by the PNV and PSOE coalition Executive establishes that workers in subcontracted companies that provide services directly to citizens must also learn Basque in contracts that will include the cost of their training. The new decree that the Urkullu Executive intended to approve yesterday closes the doors of access to public service for Spanish speakers despite the cataract of judicial rulings that annul public job offers in which Basque is required.
The death of the mother of Lehendakari Iñigo Urkullu has delayed the approval of the new decree on the obligation to know Basque to access the Basque administration and the hundreds of public companies that depend on the Basque Government, the three provincial councils and the 251 Basque town councils. The decree will be approved in the next few days and has been made to coincide with the end of the legislature because Urkullu must dissolve the Basque Parliament before next Tuesday, February 27, if he intends for the elections to be held, as all parties anticipate, on February 21. April.
In this way, in the stoppage time of its third term and with the Basque Parliament already dissolved, the regional Executive establishes for the first time the same standard for all its employees and for workers in public companies. The decree for 'linguistic normalization' supported by the PSOE establishes that "Basque is the language" of the Basque Country and, together with Spanish, the official language. But this nuance of considering one "own" and another only "official" is transformed in Basque regulations into an imposition of Basque in a very broad administration and hundreds of public companies that offer the best working conditions in the job market in Euskadi.
The decree to which the Basque PSOE has given its approval makes it clear from its second article that one of its objectives is to "place Basque as a service and work language" in all Basque public services from the administration, schools, museums and even music bands dependent on institutions. At all times, the argument used is based on the defense of the linguistic rights of Basque speakers to justify the objective that in 2033 the 140,000 workers will be assigned a Basque language profile and a deadline to accredit it.
Even those who do not have a mandatory date assigned (a deadline to prove their level of Basque) must also learn “basic training” in Basque to serve Basque citizens.
"Working language shall be understood to be that used by the personnel at the service of the entity, both orally and in writing, in their relations both internally and with other entities," establishes the Basque decree that attributes to each entity (Government departments, city councils). , councils and public companies) the power to demand that their employees only speak in Basque during their work day.
After a dozen judicial setbacks that led to the call for street mobilizations by PNV and EH Bildu, the Basque Government tells each entity how it implements this Basque language of all its personnel. "Each entity in the Basque public sector will approve its Criteria for the Use of Official Languages in accordance with its own internal organizational rules," reads the rule that gives free rein to dozens of town councils controlled by PNV and EH Bildu to impose Basque.
The Basque regulations have had to adapt the end of their processing to the two rulings of the Basque Justice that eliminated a dozen articles from the Law of Local Entities after appeals presented by Vox and the PP. The Executive of PNV and PSOE takes for granted the legality of this decree with an ambiguous wording by resorting to "we may" in controversial aspects such as the imposition of Basque as a working language or the inclusion of questions in Basque in the entrance exams. civil servant positions, employees in public companies and even job boards.
Furthermore, for access to civil servant positions, it is maintained that Basque will be mandatory for most public positions and in the few that are not, it will be valued as merit with up to 20% of the value of the points assigned to the competition. opposition. The number of positions in which Basque is mandatory is calculated through a unique formula that adds the "euskaldunes" with the "quasieuskaldunes" and divides by 2. There is no study that determines who is "quasieuskaldún" and is the Basque Department that makes its estimate.
The Urkullu Executive maintains that the application of this decree will be "progressive" and responds to a process of Euskaldunization forced from education by prioritizing studies in the so-called 'model D' (all subjects in Basque except the Spanish language) with respect to the ' model A' (subjects in Spanish with several in Basque) or 'model B' (with more training in Basque than in Spanish). With the new decree that will be approved in the coming days, Basques who have been educated in Basque will have an easier time accessing the Basque administration because they will be exempt from proving their profile. They will also be able to take the public service entrance test in Basque (without proving knowledge of Basque) and, within the administration, they will be rewarded with a Basque profile if they make "reliable use" of Basque in their workplace.
Spanish speakers will only have the option of being public employees if they achieve accreditation of their Basque profile in official tests or in the network of centers accredited by the Basque Government. In the Basque administration, 'asymmetrical' Basque language profiles will be established in some jobs in which the level of written comprehension and expression is lower than the oral one.