“Have your say" is the title of the blog (http://forums.ec.europa.eu/multilinguism/it) inaugurated last week by the European Commissioner for multilingualism, Leonard Orban, on his own website. The initiative is part of the process of consultation on multilingualism, which is now being opened to the public at large, now that the phase of dialogue with governments, national authorities, experts, intellectuals and businesses has ended. The numbers testify to the growing importance of European linguistic diversity and the consequent impact of multilingualism on socio-cultural and labour policies: 23 official languages recognized at the EU level and over 40 languages "spoken by regional or ethnic minorities". The on-line consultation (http://ec.europa.eu/education/multiling/), open until 15 November, presents a list of sixteen questions divided into three main themes: how to guarantee scope for the less common languages in the face of the general tendency to use a lingua franca? What role can languages play to integrate immigrants in society? It is worth supporting the high costs incurred by the multilingual operation of the European Union? The aim of the EU institutions is to pool the results of the consultation process and incorporate them in a "programmatic enunciation that the Commission will formulate in 2008 in the form of a Communication on multilingualism".
