Related documents & links

The British Council has recently published its collection of essays “Towards a Language Rich Europe - Multilingual essays on language policies and practices”.

This collection of essays is the first of a number of initiatives under the British Council led Language Rich Europe project. It can now be downloaded here as well as on the project’s blog or on the new website of the Poliglotti4.eu project in the section gathering publications in the area of multilingualism.

The essays collected provide an overview of the language environment in a selection of European countries ahead of the Language Rich Europe research, setting out some of the national contexts against which language policies and practices are working and highlighting many of the key challenges.

The Language Rich Europe (LRE) project is co-funded by the European Commission and aims to underline good practice and to promote multilingualism in order to create a more socially stable and prosperous Europe, based on intercultural dialogue. Over 25 partners from all across Europe, including EUNIC in Brussels, the European Union’s Network of National Institutes of Culture in Brussels are currently conducting an analysis of policies and practices on multilingualism across 20 European countries and will compare the results against European recommendations.

The research will be presented in an innovative and interactive measurement tool called the Language Rich Europe Index – A European Index on Multilingual Policies and Practices.  This Index will help to visualise the role of and support for multilingualism in the participating European countries and highlight good practice.

Participating countries include Austria, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom. 

Added: 23 September 2011