Sir, Regarding ‘EU stresses benefits of languages for SMEs‘: It is strange that the Babel-like EU, with its 23 official languages and over 40 regional tongues, announced the European Day of Languages with a speech delivered essentially in English. Likewise, although the statement announcing the multilingual celebration was posted in all European Union languages, the [...]

Sir, The Czech nomination for European Capital of Culture 2015 may have been decided upon in advance, say critics. On Wednesday a decision will be taken on whether the Czech nomination for the European Capital of Culture 2015 competition will go to Pilsen (home city to a popular lager beer brand) or to industrial Ostrava [...]

Sir, Regarding ‘European far-right defends Sarkozy’s Roma policy‘: During our lives, sometimes reality imposes hasty actions based on snap decisions, like the current situation created at EU level by the decisions of some Western European governments to throw out sections of the Roma population and return them to their countries of origin – mainly Romania [...]

Sir, Regarding ‘Creative cities at centre of EU 2020 goals, says Barroso‘: The EU will never excel in the innovation stakes when compared to its eastern counterparts. The reason for this is that they take innovation far more seriously than the EU. For the only real way that the EU can ever excel over the [...]

Sir, Regarding ‘Unreformed European school system ‘might collapse’‘: Thank you for reporting about the European schools and the public hearing about the system in the European Parliament. I draw your attention to a comment made by one of the parents during the hearing: when talking about the European schools and the issues connected to them, [...]

Sir, Zum Artikel ‘Sprachgebrauch in der EU‘: Die Förderung der Mehrsprachigkeit kann ich nur befürworten. Ich möchte aber noch etwas anmerken. Man sollte auch Regionalsprachen fördern. Man sollte auch im Ausland in Schulen und anderen Einrichtungen Regionalsprachen anbieten. So werden sich Sprecher von solchen Sprachen ermutigt fühlen, wenn auch Ausländer ihre Sprache beherrschen. Welche man [...]

Sir, Regarding your article of Wednesday 3 December 2008 entitled ‘Council of Europe slams Belgium over linguistic feud‘: Where the article mentions “persistent linguistic disputes between Flemish and French-speaking communities in the Brussels area,” it mixes up two kinds of qualifications. The communities in the – admittedly complicated – Belgian structure are officially qualified as [...]

Sir, This morning I read the article ‘Council of Europe slams Belgium over linguistic feud‘. In this article, which is available in English, French, even German, but not in Dutch (the official language in Flanders), I read about a town called ‘Crainhem’. The use of this quasi-French name (it is not even official in French) [...]

Dear Sir, I have found that despite speaking several European languages, I have recently not being able to find work that uses my languages. I have also noticed that most employers are not willing to pay for languages as a key work skill. Check out the job adverts: despite people having spent years gaining language [...]

Sir, Regarding ‘Teachers back ‘personal adoptive’ language proposal’: In your article you cited me as ‘complaining’ about not knowing what the EU programme on multilingualism will look like come September. Since we are speaking about languages, the word ‘complain’ has a specific meaning in this context. To set the record straight, I did not complain [...]