Representing the people of Malta within the European Parliament includes identifying those subjects that are of a direct interest to us as a people and speak up about such matters after consulting stakeholders and others who would like to share with me their concerns, ideas and suggestions.
It is my firm belief that mobile applications should be available in Maltese to ensure that the Maltese language is considered equal with other languages in an ever-increasing digital world.
As we speak, Maltese is one of four European languages at risk of being severely diminished due to underutilisation in technology.
Considering this fact, as a member of the European Parliament, I am currently actively engaged in meeting stakeholders in Malta to submit proposals which, among others, would facilitate the development of digital literacy programmes and introduction of language technology training and tools in education to live up to linguistic expectations in the digital age.
Several academics and leaders in the Maltese language already helped me articulate a number of proposals directed to increase investment in research and provide the facility to academic institutions to create their language technology platforms.
These are just a few proposals within a wider set of a language equality package for the digital age we are working on, because ultimately the European Union is all about unity in diversity, yet we need to constantly see how to live up to our expectations in a changing environment.
I am glad that through my role we identified education as the primary policy tool to secure the future of language equality in the digital age because education is the mother of all reforms.
The Maltese language needs to be boosted on digital platforms
Multilingualism presents one of the EU’s greatest assets of cultural diversity through its 24 official languages and more than 60 national and regional languages within it; but it is a challenge as well. It is an EU objective to enable our citizens to communicate well in our mother tongue plus two other key languages precisely to manage European multilingualism properly.
Concurrently with my efforts in convincing colleagues that the Maltese language needs to be boosted on digital platforms in the face of a deepening digital divide between widely-used and lesser-used languages, our government has put forward 14 proposals to “develop a more varied curriculum” and an “alternative curriculum”.
Quite ironic, to say the least, considering that this Labour government is going at a complete tangent from what we are strategically doing in the European Parliament.
Furthermore, whereas a PN government worked to make the Maltese language an official language of the European Union, the Labour government wants to make the Maltese language a foreign language in our own country.
This unjustified stand will not help but will neither discourage me from sustaining my efforts on the tasks which I am working on within the European Parliament.
I am proud of my language and I make it a point to intervene in Maltese whenever possible in the European Parliament because I understand the significance of the heritage that my language carries in terms of national patrimony and cultural identity.
Not only should our language be taught with the dignity and esteem that it deserves, it must also start being given greater importance on digital platforms, just as we are doing to promote the use of language technologies within exchanges between European citizens within programmes such as Erasmus+ to incentivise intercultural dialogue among native mother language speakers and host foreign language ones, especially in written and audio-visual expression.
I believe that multilingualism is one of the most important assets of Europe, while it poses one of the most substantial challenges for the fulfilment of a sufficiently functionable Digital Single Market.
By bridging the technology gap for our people, we also want policies to foster technology development for all European languages because the preservation of a language and the culture around is crucial to live together in the modern digital world.