HORIZON EUROPE┋Strategies to strengthen the European linguistic capital in a globalised world

Expected Outcome

Projects should contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Strategies for protection of the European linguistic capital at the era of the digital shift in economy, education and communication, which will include socially sustainable and economically affordable implementation measures and processes in the short and medium term.
• A deeper understanding of the impact of digitalisation/language related technologies on the European linguistic capital, especially on the endangered languages and identity preservation of EU citizens.
• Enhanced cooperation at the European level between experts on the subject and other relevant stakeholders including educational institutions.
• Recommendations to inform multilingual policies on further measures to promote the learning and daily use of more than one language, while encouraging European youth to value and possibly undertake humanistic studies in particular in their native languages.

Scope

European languages are vehicles of our identity, behaviour and cultural perception. Communicating in their native languages, EU citizens connect with their cultural heritage, build their collective and individual identity and better understand the contribution of their national or regional culture to the European culture as a whole. However, in the globalisation era, some languages are dominating, leading gradually to a ‘language oligopoly’.

More than ever, so-called ‘international languages’ threaten less-spoken languages. The European language capital is at risk of impoverishment. The domination of digital technologies leads to changes in the way people exchange i.e. by disregarding languages’ rules (syntax, semantics and orthography) and underestimating humanistic education. Protecting Europe’s linguistic capital is essential to avoid cultural dilution, to strengthen European identity, culture and creativity and to promote mutual understanding and social inclusion, which serve social, economic and political stability in Europe.

Therefore, research should address tensions between globalisation and the preservation of European identities as expressed by languages, paying attention to policies and practices regarding the use of national and ‘international’ languages and their place in each country’s cultural, scientific, academic, social, political and economic life. It should develop evidence-based strategies and policy recommendations to help policymakers and stakeholders protect endangered European languages in the context of the massive socio-cultural and economic changes of the present era. Proposals should inform EU multilingualism policy and provide national education (and other) policies with guidance to better link EU citizens with each other as well as with their own language and literature tradition, which are the main repository of the European culture and history. In times when democracy faces cumulative threats, it is particularly important that proposals advise on ways where all languages spoken in Europe can harmoniously coexist and benefit from equal treatment, including the use of language digital technologies. Links can also be made to the projects developed under the topic HORIZON-CL2-2024-DEMOCRACY-01-10: Political participation in multilingual spaces.

Proposals should develop recommendations that empower citizens to utilise their own language at national, regional and EU level. These recommendations should aim at combating marginalisation of disadvantaged linguistic communities. In pursuing these recommendations, proposals could identify weaknesses of the multilingual policies in the EU (explicit and implicit) and share best practices from other multilingual countries across the globe. In their design, proposals are encouraged to involve young people from the very beginning with a view to grasping their views and perceptions as regards to multilingualism in the EU as well as the most suitable ways to protect their native languages.