Legislative Frameworks and Comparative Language Acts

Abstract

In a volume devoted to the relationship between the promotion, protection and regulation of language the critical questions are what sort of language policy is being promulgated and to what extent are the language rights or available services actually upheld as a matter of routine, daily behaviour. Typically, an examination of the manner in which specific language regimes operate demands some consideration of the wider legal and political context.1 I will scrutinize this by focusing on aspects of the European legislative landscape, teasing out what may be said about human rights and language standards as far as the official EU and Council of Europe recommendations and treaty obligations are concerned. This information will then be used to interpret and calibrate the findings of the From Act to Action Project, which was a systematic analysis of the implementation of official language legislation in three EU contexts: Finland, Ireland and Wales. The project’s aim was to ascertain to what extent legislative acts are put into action by responsible authorities and with what consequence for the implementation of official language strategies. The chapter will close by offering a series of considerations, derived from the project, which have purchase for many other EU contexts where bilingualism and multilingualism are officially recognized in domestic and international law.