Diana Riba criticizes the Committee following the mission it organized to evaluate the language immersion system in Catalonia and decries the waste of resources it means for the institution

The Committee on Petitions mission looking into the language immersion system in Catalan schools concluded yesterday. Esquerra Republicana’s European Parliament spokeswoman Diana Riba affirmed that the mission was nothing less than a "new alliance against Catalan, a new escalation of the Spanish right and far-right against the consensus in Catalan society." Ms Riba recalled that this mission did not include any members of the European Parliament’s progressive groups, who chose to boycott it. Diana Riba did not join the committee either, but went as an observer in order to denounce the obvious lack of neutrality of the mission.

In this regard, Ms Riba gave an example of this manipulation, referring to the educational centres that had been chosen to carry out the mission: "The delegation of MEPs was limited to visiting two schools, one for special education, where linguistic immersion is not carried out, and another which was affected by the 25% ruling, both in the same municipality." Ms Riba also denounced the "inquisitorial tone of the meetings, especially with those witnesses who did not share the fatalistic narrative that the right and far-right are trying to sell in Europe."

A petition that should have concluded 5 years ago

MEP Riba underlined the "inconsistency" of keeping a request open since 2017 despite the fact that the European Commission had reiterated on several occasions that it "has no powers" on this issue. In fact, the initial response from the European executive in this regard was in 2018, and it has since maintained the same position. "If the petition remains open, even organizing missions of this type with the high cost in economic and logistic costs, in time and personnel, it is because of the obstinacy of Dolors Montserrat and her allies in the far-right Vox and Ciudadanos groups," denounced Diana Riba.

Esquerra’s spokeswoman consequently called for transparency and addressed a letter to the European Parliament’s President Roberta Metsola in which she demanded a "thorough investigation into the costs of this mission."

Ms Riba was determined, saying that "while public resources are wasted on absurd missions on non-existent problems, the fact is that the Council of Europe has decided to evaluate Spanish democracy for the first time regarding a long list of reasons that concern the institution; and that the United Nations rapporteur on minority issues has recommended reviewing and reconsidering the judgments of the TSJC that establish that 25% of classes in Catalan classrooms should be in Spanish, showing concern on the persecution that the Catalan language is suffering."