Language Research

The Constitution, adopted on October 17, 1868

The 1984 Language Act states that French is the only language of legislation, and that French, German as well as Luxembourgian can be used for administrative or judicial purposes. Official documents are usually not available in Luxembourgian. It is clear, then, that the language is considerably marginalized in certain domains, especially in its written form. The "loi sur les régimes de langues" (Languages Regulation Law) of 1984 recommends that employees in the Public Service answer queries in the language they have been received i.e. Luxemburg, German or French. On road signs, Luxembourgian is usually put beside the official French version.

Luxembourgian is the national language and, along with the French language, used for legislative texts, an official language of the State. It is not, however, a working language of the European Union. German, the main language of the press, maintains a certain official position as well.

Updated (April 2004)

THE 1984 LANGUAGES ACT

Article 1

Lëtzebuergesch is the national language of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

Article 2

Legislation is drafted in French

Articles 3, 4

Either French or German and Lëtzebuergesch can be used in administrative services.

Luxembourg does not specifically recognize any linguistic or cultural minorities. In practice, many official documents are; however, available not only in the three official languages, but also in English, Portuguese and Italian.

BROADCASTING LEGISLATION

THE 1991 ELECTRONIC MEDIA ACT does not contain any specific provisions on the use of languages or the rights of linguistic minorities.

The most detailed provisions on the use of languages are to be found in THE CHARTER OF RADIO LATINA. It states that:

The main objective of the project is to make a multilingual and multicultural radio frequency available to the foreign communities residing in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

The beneficiary of the program has undertaken to direct its efforts towards the presentation of Luxembourgish socio-cultural realities in the mother tongues of listeners, as well as in French, which is both a common language and the language of the French and Belgian populations. Concerning the Luxembourgers, it intends to promote and support socio-cultural expression, portraying immigrants' countries of origin.

The Charter specifically indicates that 47 percent of the programs ought to be in Portuguese; 27 percent in French; 10 percent in Italian; 6 percent in Spanish; 5 percent in Lëtzebuergesch and 5 percent in other languages.

The Luxembourgish Government would like to further liberalize access to the electronic media, at least for those media where the number of available frequencies is not limited by technical constraints. It is generally assumed that such an opening would lead to the development of new cable broadcasting that would specifically target at those sections of the Luxembourgish population which do not speak the Lëtzebuergesch language.

Source: Minority-language Related Broadcasting and Legislation in the OSCE, Program in Comparative Media Law and Policy (PCMLP), Center for Socio-Legal Studies, Wolfson College, Oxford University & Institute for Information Law (IViR) (http://www.ivir.nl/index-english.html), Universiteit van Amsterdam (Study commissioned by the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities), April 2003, edited by T. McGonagle (IViR), B. Davis Noll & M. Price (PCMLP), http://www.ivir.nl/publications/mcgonagle/Minority-language%20broadcasting.pdf

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