Words of Asier Sarasua www.hirinet.net:

“Some EITB workers have been working for decades and now, in 2014, the Basque Parliament has passed a motion so that when these workers’ seats are covered definitively, they will not be immediately required by Euskera, but will be given facilities to learn Euskera in the coming years.

The Euskaldunization system has not worked and will not. In Vitoria-Gasteiz, in 2014, I believe that the advantages that employees of public administrations have in learning Euskera must be removed. Here are my reasons [we take a summary of the original]:Thirty
years have passed since the Basque Country is official. In the 1980s, a large majority of the population did not know the Basque Country and did not have the opportunity to learn. But the policy that could then make sense doesn't make sense in 2014. 30 years are enough to learn a language (for learners), and the workers who have been ‘decades’ in public institutions have had ‘decades’ to learn Euskera if they had had the will to do so.

Parents of children born from 1977-1978 knew that Euskera was official. Therefore, no one who is now between 35 and 36 years of age should be offered the opportunity to learn Basque.

It makes no sense that in the calls for new jobs candidates do not meet the requirements of the profile. To be a journalist, you have to be a journalist. In order to be Secretary, it is necessary to know the Secretariat. These requirements must be in place before the job is presented and not thereafter.

Those of us who already know Euskera, both because we have learned it at home and because they have learned it and that is why they have learned it on their own, we do not have that right. In our jobs we require other knowledge, perhaps English, perhaps others, but the administration does not give us as many advantages as with the Basque Country to gain access to this new knowledge.

Those who have not yet learned Euskera are those who have not wanted to learn, either because they have not seen it necessary, or because they have an ideological attitude contrary to the Basque. It does not matter that for twenty more years they are given more facilities: they will not learn.

Thanks to all the advantages and facilities they have had (several years freed to learn Basque, paying salaries and leaving the job vacant), many of those who learned Basque through this route do not use it in the work of the public administration. Moreover, they are no longer vasco-speakers, as they have lost Euskera due to lack of practice. Now it would only be lacking for someone to start asking for a second round of euskaldunization for these workers, so that the mockery was total.

When public administrations start a recruitment process, candidates must be bilingual from the outset. To do so, asking for an Euskera degree will not solve the problem: the selection process must be bilingual. The employees of the administration must be prepared to respond in both Basque and Spanish.”