Stockholm 2003

EFNIL Conference in October 2003 in Stockholm

At the 13–14 October 2003 representants of national institutions for language in Europe and the Scandinavian countries met in Saltsjöbaden, outside Stockholm, Sweden, to the first regular conference with the new organization European Federation of National Institutions for Language, EFNIL.

The main theme of the conference was the issue of linguistic functional domains in sectors of crucial importance such as such as culture, education, science, media, politics, labour market, trade etc. and the relation between national languages, international languages and minority languages. A second theme was language legislation.

The conference was attended by more than 30 delegates, the majority representing the EFNIL member states, that is EU-states. All EU-states were present except Ireland. In addition, there were representatives invited with an observatory status from the non-EU-states Norway and Iceland and from the Nordic Language Council.

The conference started with an opening speech by Mrs Marita Ulvskog, the Swedish minister of culture. There were 13 speeches under the main theme giving information issue of linguistic functional domains in Denmark, Germany, Greece, Finland, France, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain Sweden, and United Kingdom. Under the second theme, language legislation, reports were presented of the situation of Belgium, Finland, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden.

As preliminaries to the discussions of the main theme a questionnaire was sent out.

After the conference a general assembly was held, during which the federation was constituted and an executive committee was elected.