The Meeting of the Chairpersons of the Committees on Education, Science and Culture and the Committees on the Development of Information Society of the EU Parliaments entitled United in Diversity: Political and Social Development Aspects of EU Languages and Cultures was held in the Seimas on 27 September 2013. The Meeting was attended by representatives of the European Parliament and the European Commission; the participants of the academic conference of European linguists presented their findings.

Session II of the Meeting focused on the problems and initiatives of digitalisation of a language as a part of cultural heritage, the promotion of multilingualism in Europe and the importance of its presence in digital media.

At the end of the Meeting, the conclusions of Meeting of the Chairpersons of the Committees on Education, Science and Culture and the Committees on the Development of Information Society were adopted, which stress that due to the processes of globalisation and migration, the importance of knowledge of languages has particularly increased in today’s European societies while language teaching has become one of the key objectives of EU language policy in the area of education.

The conclusions also called on the European Commission and the Council to adapt various EU policies and programmes so as to support all European languages and linguistic diversity using EU financial support tools for the period between 2014 and 2020, making sure that programmes on education and training, youth and sport, culture and media, as well as structural funds provide all instruments designed to promote languages in new technologies.

“Seeking to promote multilingualism in the digital space, there needs to be, first and foremost, a much stronger focus on developing transversal skills and basic skills at all levels and making educational resources more available in mother tongue. Schools, universities and vocational training institutions must increase access to education via open educational resources,” the document says.

The conclusions note that Europe badly needs high-quality machine translation software for all European and major non-European languages in order finally to overcome language barriers and thus future-proof European languages. The participants of the Meeting believe that the provision of new applications and services to citizens would create a host of new opportunities for the European labour market and language industries.

When closing the Meeting, Mindaugas Bastys, Chair of the Seimas Committee on the Development of Information Society, expressed his hopes that the Meeting and the adoption of the Conclusions would serve as one of the necessary steps in fully and consistently implementing the policy on multilingualism. “Hopefully, you will present these Conclusions to your national governments and take necessary measures of parliamentary scrutiny so that on the level of national policies your governments place a particular focus on ensuring linguistic diversity, machine translation and digitalisation of a language as a part of cultural heritage,” said Mr Bastys.   

 Rimas Rudaitis, Public Relations Unit, tel. +370 5  239 6132, e-mail: [email protected]