- 16 students from the Basque Country are in Paris this Tuesday, they have claimed the right to study in Basque and have asked Members to take steps to do so. “We are nervous, but we know what we mean,” the students of Liceo Etxepare and Manex Erdozaintzi Etxart told ARGIA in the morning. Students from Corsica, Occitania, Alsace and Brittany have also defended language rights.
A total of 42 students from these five territories of the French State have made a symbolic action before the Ministry of Education, in which a courtroom has been represented (see videos of the concentration at the end of the news). Subsequently, one student from each territory spoke in Parliament to the members of the research group on local languages and cultures.
Students are calling for the amendment of Article 2 of the French Constitution, which states that the single language of the French Republic is French. They point out that the situation of minority languages is worrying and that it is necessary to guarantee a true status so that “the State can emerge from the precariousness in which these languages have been established”, claiming the official status. To keep these languages alive they also need more resources: “The State’s resources for teaching our language are insignificant.”
“We claim that tests can be performed in Basque”
Take the floor of Santi Lazkaray in Parliament on behalf of the students of the Basque Country. The students themselves explained to ARGIA that the bass and brevette can pass in Basque. “We complain that we cannot pass the tests in our mother tongue. We study Basque, but then we have to do the tests in French, with the difficulties that this entails. We have made our struggle come.”