L-Akkademja tal-Malti yesterday congratulated the National Council for the Maltese Language for its performance so far "particularly for the report it published recently about the Maltese names for the European currency".

It said the report tackles the issue of finding a name in Maltese for the European currency "clearly and professionally". The academy said it is convinced that as the National Council for the Maltese Language was set up by the government with the specific aim, among others, of establishing how new words should be written in Maltese, its advice on this matter would be taken.

"We must be aware that besides the Maltese, the Slovenians, Hungarians, Lithuanians and Latvians are also resisting the uniform spelling of euro.

We, therefore, exhort the Maltese government to join its forces with those of the countries mentioned so that we Maltese will gain the right to write this word according to the orthographic rules of our language," the academy said.

The Cabinet has decided that the word euro shall be used in all Maltese legislation and official documents though it encourages the colloquial use of ewro in other circumstances.