Below is an article published by New Europe Online:

In times of austerity the question of the cost of providing public service in multiple languages is contentious. Ethnic conflicts are re-emerging in particular in the EU's new member states. Internationally recognised peace-builder, former Finnish president, Martti Ahtisaari is concerned with reshaping attitudes towards minorities throughout Europe. 

“What we need are more egalitarian policies. But we should wait for countries to solve their financial difficulties before blaming them for not doing enough for their minorities", stated Ahtisaari at a seminar in Brussels last week.

He recognises that the question of the political representation of minorities is pertinent in the politically, increasingly centralised Europe. Long-term language strategies should ensure the use of languages other than the majority language in multilingual European countries. Currently Ahtisaari is engaged by the Swedish Assembly, a cross-political body, to work on an action plan to safeguard the use of two official languages in Finland. He is concerned by the harsh attitudes towards the use of Swedish in Finland. 

“In Finland, the legislation is adequate, but there are problems in the application of the language provisions,” Ahtisaari warned.

“However, citizens in minority should not be inferior to the linguistic majority.”

The Finnish model for handling two official languages is being advocated in Brussels as a model for ensuring the rights of co-existence for linguistic groups. The Swedish minority in Finland enjoys a strong constitutional backing and the country is officially bilingual, although the Swedish-speakers by now number less than 6% of the population. The status of the Swedish-speakers is politically controversial with a recent surge in the populist vote for politicians that publicly defy the policies that decree the use of the minority language in all public administration, as well as public relations and consumer information for products and services.

The controversy is not easily bridged; the Swedish population hails from the Scandinavian settlement in the coastal areas that was established historically at the same time as Finnish-speaking tribes inhabited other parts of country, driving the indigenous Saame population further north. Today, Saame is recognized as a minority language and represents the only indigenous language in Europe. However, Swedish long remained the language of administration and culture in Finland, then ruled by Sweden, and it was not until the 19th century nationalistic movement formed to oppose Russian rule that Finnish was even established as a language of instruction. 

The focus is turning to advocating bilingualism, a reality for many Swedish-speakers that master the majority language as well as their native tongue and are faced with using less Swedish in both public and personal life. Among immigrants in Finland, Russian is the most commonly used language, whereas business life is dominated by English. 

The Swedish Cultural Foundation, the minority's main private sponsor of culture and Swedish-language media, advocates an EU-wide policy on minority languages to further the use of multiple languages in public life. The foundation is concerned that there is no forum for minority policy at EU level. Their efforts focus now on developing approaches to multilingualism, a reality for an increasing number of professionals and students alike that are influenced by the use of English as lingua franca. The initiative aims to advance the discussion from minority issues to instead focus on the usefulness of bi- or trilingualism. The plans rally some support on the part of EU decision-makers. 

- We should abolish the 19th century myth of the monolingual nation state, stated Belén Bernaldo de Quirós from the European Commission speaking at the conference organized by the Swedish minority in Brussels last week.

- Each language has a unique identity and that should not be sacrificed on the altar of efficiency, the European Commission representative contended.

The EU is planning to spend more funds on initiatives that sustain small and regional languages in the EU. That finds support in the European parliament with a number of minority representatives. 

The Finnish Swedish-speakers' political party has long been trying to find backing for reserving a designated seat in the European Parliament for the Swedish minority. Their current member of the European Parliament Nils Thorvalds sees a danger in the rise in conflicts between local communities and nation states in Europe. 

- There is a problem when the EU is integrating economically and at the same time disintegrating politically. We should open up decision-making at the EU-level to the local communities in order to avoid confrontation, said Thorvalds.

Curiously, the minority vote is decisive for the outcome of the election to the European Parliament in Finland. For at least four of the current 13 Finnish MEPs, the religious background has played a crucial role in determining their appointment, with one of them rallying in particular the Orthodox Christian minority and others appealing to Protestant sects. 

The Swedish-speakers have managed to hold their seat in Parliament as long as Finland has been part of the EU due to the d'Hondt method for vote counting that favours a concentration in votes per party throughout the country. Because the regions in Finland are linguistically mixed, apart from the self-governing Åland Islands, the minorities cannot be granted the same level of regional self-governance as is practised in e.g. Belgium or Switzerland.