EU Council Directive 77/486: Plans to abolish Mother Tongue Teaching Directive?
Apparently the EU, or a strong force within the EU, is planning to abolish the Mother Tongue Teaching Directive (Council Directive 77/486).
A short repetition of the directive's importance:
Directive 77/486 obliges the member states to provide mother tongue teaching for minority students in the grade schools - with the provision that "minority languages" as a term refers to the national languages of EU citizens, but with the very important, although not binding, addition that this right should be extended to all minorities. The directive has been followed up by a range of decisions, particularly in the European parlament, about integrating minority mother tongue teaching into the mainstream curriculum of grade schools.
New developments:
It seems that a Swedish initiative taken while Sweden was the chair of the EU had the purpose of automatically extending the directive. However, perhaps as a consequence of a government change in Sweden, it may have become an effort to abolish the directive. A hearing has been carried out based on a "green paper"
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