The Basque language once again confronts justice with politicians.
A court in Vitoria has annulled as “discriminatory” the requirement of the B2 linguistic profile of Basque in a call to access the interim pool of the Euskadi Local Police, which Basque city councils go to when they have to fill vacant agent positions municipal.
In another recent judicial decision, the Supreme Court had not admitted for processing the appeal filed by the Irún City Council (Gipuzkoa) against a ruling by the Basque Superior Court of Justice (TSJPV) that declared null a summons from this consistory, which required knowledge from Basque to municipal police officers.
The ruling now handed down by the Contentious-Administrative Court number 2 of Vitoria, which is going to be appealed by the Basque Government, joins other judicial decisions that have questioned the requirement of knowledge of Basque to access positions in the Basque administrations.
The latest ruling maintains that asking for the B2 level of Basque (advanced knowledge) "flatly contradicts the basic principles of access to the public function", because it prevents access to the job market "to anyone who cannot accredit said level".
In August 2021, the Basque Government convened a selection process for the creation of a unified pool of interim agents of the Local Police of the Basque Country, a call to which people who could not prove the upper intermediate level of Basque B2 (the fourth of six levels).
The union appealed this call before the courts considering that this obligation prevents access to a local police position to those who have not obtained the relevant linguistic title.
"Basque must count as a merit, not as a requirement," says the general secretary of UGT-Euskadi, Raúl Arza.
More information
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The Executive chaired by Iñigo Urkullu has been surprised and has rejected the court's decision outright.
The spokesman for the Basque Government, Bingen Zupiria, at the same time Minister of Culture and Language Policy, has stated that the sentence "abstracts" from the legislation in force since the approval in 1982 of the Law for the Normalization of Euskera.
This regional regulation, Zupiria has said, tries to facilitate the "coexistence" of Basque and Spanish, the two official languages in this autonomous community.
And he added that the aforementioned law obliges administrations to "serve Basque citizens in any of the two official languages they choose", in such a way that citizens have the right to "choose the language in which they want to be served" by the Basque administrations.
In the description that the Adult Literacy and Re-Euskaldunization Institute (HABE in its acronym in Basque) makes of the levels of teaching Basque to adults, it is explained that grade B2 gives the ability "in everyday contexts" to be "capable of interact fluently with friends, work colleagues, and Basque speakers, to offer information, ask for opinions, defend their point of view, etc., expressing themselves fluently and effectively, distinguishing the significant aspects from the details of the information to be transmitted” .
Involution
The PNV and EH Bildu have also reacted very upset with the content of the sentence.
The group for the defense of the Basque language Kontseilua already warned a little over a year ago of the “involution” that the Basque language is suffering in the courts.
The Basque Superior declared null and void in 2021 a resolution of the Irún City Council (Gipuzkoa), governed by the PSE-EE and Podemos, which in 2017 gave the green light to the call for 12 positions of Local Police officers that required knowledge of Basque .
Months later, in September 2021, the TSJPV upheld an appeal filed by Vox against several articles of the Euskadi Local Institutions Law (2016) on the use of Basque in the Basque administration.
The Basque High Court raised its doubts about article 6.2 of the aforementioned regulations to the Constitutional Court, which allows town councils to write their operating documents (calls, agendas, motions, agreements, minutes...) only in Basque, except in the case that any member of the local entity alleges ignorance of this language.
For the far-right party, this legal provision supposes an "imposition" of Basque over Spanish.
Likewise, the Supreme Court declared null in 2020 a requirement contained in an ordinance of the City Council of Lasarte-Oria (Gipuzkoa) that imposed the obligation to use Basque in activities aimed exclusively at children under 16 years of age in order to benefit from the subsidies provided for in the municipal regulations.
The controversy over the use and demand for Basque has continued over time.
It was reproduced recently when, last February, a court annulled the dismissal of an interim official of the Llodio City Council who could not prove a PL3 Basque language profile.
In the ruling, the magistrate argued that the dismissed employee's lack of capacity had not been proven.
In that ruling, she pointed out that learning this language presents "extraordinary difficulties" and that "the Basque language is the fifth most difficult language in the world."
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