Established three years ago, the NPLD (Network to promote Linguistic Diversity) is a program supported by the European Commission, and counting many official representatives of European linguistic minorities among its members. Among the numerous represented institutions: The Regional Council of (French) Brittany, the Welsh Language Board, the Saami Parliament (Scandinavia), the Institute for Occitan Studies, the Minister of Education and Research of Estonia, and the department office of Catalonian linguistic policies.

Objective? To preserve European linguistic diversity by supporting minority languages, whether they’ve been registered in the Constitution or not, such as regional languages or the languages of smaller states: 50 million people, that is 10% of the population of the European Union, speak a regional or a minority language!

The NPLD aims to

– launch projects, especially in education

– ease cooperation between the European countries at all political levels, in order to safeguard minority languages

– support political action, essential for sustaining linguistic diversity

The organization will be gathering in Brussels on October 27 to assess the work conducted so far, and also define new objectives. Two of the lecturers who’ll describe the various projects fulfilled thanks to European cooperation are Peggy Heikkinen, from the Swedish Assembly of Finland, and Araceli de Lezana, of the Basque government.

Free admission, subscriptions online

NPLD Conference 2010

AREA 42

42, rue des Palais

1030 Brussels

Belgium

More information here