Isla tries to convince Costa about the official status of Catalan in the EU: "It is a question of linguistic justice"

Brussels"Optimism within realism." With these words, which could perfectly describe the president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa left his meeting with the president of the European Council, Antonio Costa, to whom he conveyed his desire for Catalan to become an official language in the European Union. Thus, the socialist leader has tried to convince the former Portuguese prime minister and has argued that "it is a question of linguistic justice" that would reinforce the "feeling of Europeanism" of the Catalans. Now, according to Isla himself, Costa "was receptive" but "cautious." "It is a matter that is not at all simple," the president of the Generalitat has justified in statements to the media from Brussels.

Illa has also defended that, adding the speakers of Galician and Basque, around 20 million European citizens would be more represented in the European institutions if the request of Pedro Sánchez's government to make the three co-official languages of the State official in the EU is approved. "I have put myself at his disposal for everything we can do to support the work of the Spanish executive," added the president of the Generalitat. In turn, funds from Costa's cabinet stressed that this meeting "demonstrates" the commitment of the European Council to the regions and European citizens, and confirmed Isla's request on the status of Catalan in the European institutions.

The PSC leader has also taken advantage of the high-level meetings he has held in Brussels to proclaim the return of Catalonia as an influential player in Spanish and European politics. In fact, it is the first time that a president of the Generalitat has met with a president of the European Council since 2011, when Artur Mas met with Herman Van Rompuy fourteen years ago. It is worth mentioning, however, that Costa was largely supported by Sánchez at the head of the European Council and that, for the moment, the Portuguese social democrat is showing himself to be more accessible than his predecessors. Not long ago, he received the lehendakari, Imanol Pradales.

In any case, at the moment the initiative to make Catalan official in the EU as a whole remains at a standstill and for months the Member States have been asking for more economic and legal information to unblock it, according to several diplomatic sources who assured ARA. Thus, Spain, for the moment, does not request any report from the legal services of the EU Council, as its European partners would like. However, Isla has confirmed that the Spanish government expects Poland, which holds the presidency of the EU Council during the first half of this year, to put it back on the table at one of the ministerial meetings to be held in the coming months.

"Decentralised" European funds

Beyond Costa, Isla's agenda on Thursday started early and she went for a run at 6 in the morning with a couple of journalists and the MEP Javi López, who was unable to finish the ten kilometres that the president ran at a good pace and around the Cinquantenaire Park in the Belgian capital. She also met with the vice-president of the European Commission and head of Energy Transition, the also socialist Teresa Ribera, and in the afternoon she participated, in Catalan, in the plenary session of the Committee of the Regions, which was held at the headquarters of the European Parliament in Brussels.

In line with the vast majority of leaders of autonomous communities who have participated in this plenary session, Illa has called for avoiding The "centralisation" of the European Cohesion Fund, which is one of the most important in the EU and is currently received directly by regional administrations. In this way, the president wants to avoid that, as the European Commission proposes in order to reduce bureaucracy, from now on this community funding must first go to the Spanish government and, later, it is the latter that distributes it according to its criteria. "Simplification does not mean centralization," said Illa.