WELSH LANGUAGE TO GET SAME EUROPEAN RIGHTS AS SPAIN GRANTS TO CATALAN AND BASQUE

The people of Wales will be able to pen letters to the EU in their ancient tongue from later this year when Welsh is set to be added to the EU's linguistic lexicon.

The British government has agreed to a request from Wales to make Welsh a "co-official language" in EU institutions, a Welsh Assembly spokesman said, prompting critics to say the translation money could be better spent. Wales sees Spain as a model. Three regional languages, Catalan, Galician and Basque, have "co-official" status. This means citizens can write to and receive a reply from the EU's council of member states, the EU Parliament and the Commission in their own language.

Welsh ministers would be allowed to speak in Welsh at meetings in Brussels with translation funded by the Welsh Assembly. Welsh would be allowed in the Committee of the Regions. In Spain 's case, it is the central Madrid government that pays for translation and interpretation. Welsh is one of the Celtic languages that includes Irish, which became an offical EU language this year although it has even fewer fluent speakers than Welsh. Basque was used in the EU council of ministers for the first time in 2007 by Miren Azkarate, the region's culture minister.

EU Multilingualism Commissioner Leonard Orban said there have not been many letters in the Spanish regional languages but co-official status was important symbolically. "It's a political issue and sends an important message to different regions that we are making efforts to address people in different languages," Orban told Reuters. Britain will soon make a formal request to Brussels for co-official status for Welsh with an agreement on usage with the council due first, perhaps by the summer, the Assembly said. But the European Parliament -as with Spain 's regional languages- won't allow Welsh in its sessions for the time being due to its services being stretched handling the bloc's 23 official languages used in all meetings. One of Wales ' four European parliament members said the cash for Welsh translation would be better used in providing Welsh language nurseries back home. "After all, ensuring a language is used everyday by its people is the very best way to secure its future," said Eluned Morgan, a Welsh socialist member. Orban said it would be money well spent.