Following the legislative process, the proposal for a Law on the Protection and Promotion of the Heritage of Regional Languages was returned to the French Parliament on 8 April, after its first reading on 13 February last year and on 10 December last again by the Senate.

The text has been adopted in its entirety and the law will provide a more fixed framework for the teaching of minority languages, and will also have a positive impact on the funding of the centres. The vote has been important for the survival of the Basque Country in Iparralde, which is still unrecognised, as well as for all the minority languages dependent on France.

According to the group Pour que vivent nos langues, it is a text of great importance for "the protection and the road to the recognition of minority languages". The latter has also disseminated on social media a request that has appealed to parliamentarians to vote in favour of the law, as the majority has finally done. This structure was created in 2019 and since then it is the meeting point of different actors working for minority languages in the hands of the French State.

The bill by Breton Rep. Paul Molac came to the Basque Parliament in February 2020. The first reading was emptied of content by Members, but with amendments it was given the basis in the Senate last December, contrary to the opinion of the Government.

However, the group recalls that the French President, Emmanuel Macron, also stood in favour of such a law in 2017: "A text compatible with the French Constitution and the unity of the French people and which guides a genuine statute for minority languages is not only a democratic obligation, but also an essential measure", he added. Since 1951 there has been no law on languages in the French State.

Opportunity to develop a public model of immersion in Basque

Currently, as regards the teaching of minority languages, the French Educational Code provides only two options: the teaching of a bilingual section or the teaching of minority language and culture as subjects. The law officially enables a third option, through the immersion model, "without prejudice to the objective pursued by a good knowledge of the French language". With this option, public centers could also begin to propose a model of immersion.

In recent years, they have had the opportunity to offer a model of linguistic immersion in Basque in schools of public mothers – but this is not recognised as a right, but they take it through the right to experimentation that French legislation has within it. There are nineteen such projects in the public schools of Ipar Euskal Herria and other private projects in Christians. But the field of experimentation has shown its limits in recent years, as demonstrated by tensions in the Capital last year.

The aim of this law is to generalise the provision of teaching minority languages in public institutions.

"In order to protect the languages of our region and prevent them from becoming dead languages, we need to strengthen the school learning offer. I hope that the law that will be debated this morning in Parliament will be voted for finally to be implemented," he published on 8 April, before the law is passed, Paul Molace, who is at the basis of the proposal: