(Speech by the State Advocate General, Oscar Fiumara, at the conference on "The equality of languages in the European Union" - Florence 10 May 2008). The issue of multilingualism does not immediately appear in Community law - today we should better say European law - in its current configuration. In an initial phase, precisely the strictly "community" one of European law, the theme is posed as the theme of the linguistic regime of the newly born European institutions; that is, at first sight, as an internal or organizational theme, not as a But even at this stage it is already significant how art. 290 of the EC Treaty (I use, of course, the current numbering) deals with it: art. 290 gives the Council the power to decide on the linguistic regime of the institutions , and provides for this competence to be exercised unanimously. Therefore the linguistic matter, even in this purely internal projection, was immediately considered as a reserve of the me mbri (of which the Council is the institutional expression), and removed both from the Community as such (of which the Commission is the institutional expression), and from the changing majorities that can be formed within the Council, and which have sometimes marked history of community construction, the prevalence of "axes" and interests of certain States with respect to the whole of the Community itself. In substance, art. 290 said (and says, since the Treaty of Lisbon also left it unchanged) that the linguistic regime is not a purely technical fact (for this reason it is removed from the Commission), and that it is not a purely political fact (for this reason, in the within the context of the Council, removed it from the game of majorities). Already in this discipline of the matter, we can therefore see that everything that, in the community context, touches languages, is considered as pertaining to the foundations of the construction of the community itself, that is, as a something that directly concerns the raison d'être and the essential aims of community construction, for which it must be regulated through competences and procedures of meaningful guarantee. In short, already art. 290 CE declares that in linguistic matters no interventions are allowed whose democratic legitimacy and thorough weighting are not certain, and it is significant that this configuration of linguistic matter as a matter pertaining to fundamental interests of the Community is placed first of all in a norm, such as 'art. 290 CE, which apparently, as I said, is concerned with a purely internal organizational problem of the Community, that is, with the operating language of the Community institutions: thus art. 290 not only comes to say that language is never a mere organizational fact and is always a fact of fundamental juridical importance in the construction of the community. Much more, it comes to say that the fundamental guarantee of language operates in the community order, above all with reference to the juridical expressions of the community. In fact, Community law emanates from the Community institutions, and this law declares art. 290, must be expressed in all community languages. After all, it is well known that law is always, originally, a linguistic fact: the norm always has the form of a linguistic proposition (above all, but not only, in written law; remains true, mutatis mutandis, even in law based on the precedent jurisprudential): juridical power is, therefore, first of all linguistic power. It follows that in a Community, indeed now a Union, founded on the equality of States and their citizens, all languages must have the same legal dignity: European law is destined, by its nature, to manifest itself in all European languages. The day when certain languages only acquired the role of specific languages of European legal expression, the law thus expressed would no longer be authentically European. 290 CE. The first development was the regulation 1isivo was then the impulse given by the Treaty of Amsterdam, which introduced in art. 6 of the Union Treaty, paragraph 3, according to which the Union respects the national identity of its member states. And the inescapable expression of national identity is, of course, language. The Treaty of Amsterdam then introduced in art. 21 of the EC Treaty, paragraph 3, according to which every citizen of the Union can write to the institutions in his own language and has the right to obtain an answer in the same language.This innovation is very important from a systematic point of view because it is immediately connected with great innovation of the Amsterdam Treaty, which is the introduction, with the new article 17 of the EC Treaty, of Union citizenship. The right to one's own language in legal relations with the Community institutions is therefore one of the fundamental and inalienable contents of Community citizenship. Deprived of this content, the principle of community citizenship would risk expiring in a rhetorical proclamation. 21 n. 3 and art. 17 of the EC Treaty modified by the Amsterdam Treaty therefore complete that process of affirmation of multilingualism from the beginning intuited by the original (and not surprisingly never changed) formulation of art. 290 CE: multilingualism as a founding value of the Union, and therefore not only as an organizational fact but, much more, as a fundamental legal guarantee for European citizens. This development is crowned by the recent Lisbon Treaty, which modifies art. 2 of the Union Treaty by introducing the principle according to which the Union respects linguistic diversity. In this way, definitive legal relevance is given to the principle of multilingualism, which up to now had only been affirmed in the same terms by art. 22 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, whose legal value, as we know, cannot go so far as to modify the fundamental treaties. In short, multilingualism is always, in all its manifestations, a legal value, not just a cultural value. The legal situation that I have summarized excludes the possibility of establishing two levels: that of European languages understood as a fact of cultural expression (which obviously are all, since every European country is the bearer of a secular culture), and that of European languages to be understood as fact of legal expression (which may not even be all European languages). No: the European legal expression is necessarily multilingual like the cultural expression. If we want, it represents the European culture that makes itself right. In this perspective, the Lisbon Treaty could perhaps have done even more, that is to confirm art. 81 of the second part of the European Constitution, which directly constitutionalized the principle of art. 21 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, containing the prohibition of discrimination based on language. The Lisbon Treaty limited itself to reformulating art. 6 of the EU Treaty, including in it an express reference to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, therefore also to art. 21, and the provision that the latter has the same legal value as the Treaties. A somewhat longer path to affirm, however, an inalienable principle: the national language is part of the inalienable legal patrimony of every European citizen in the same way in his relations. with other citizens and with community institutions. Any restriction in this regard would be discriminatory. In conclusion, one cannot fail to mention the contribution of Community jurisprudence. The Court of Justice in the Grand Section in the recent judgment of 11 December 2007 (case C-161 completes the path I have traced: in fact, no guarantee is really such until it finds its own judge.