Celebrating International Mother Language Day: the EU's commitment to linguistic diversity

This Saturday, 21 February, is International Mother Language Day.

The EU is proud of its linguistic diversity – 24 official languages and some 60 regional and minority languages with varying degrees of official recognition across our territory. Language is a vital expression of identity and culture, which is why the Culture Compass for Europe is intended to preserve this diversity.

Through Erasmus + and Creative Europe, we support language diversity with projects emerging from linguistic communities themselves – from creative residencies for writers working in minority languages to student exchanges promoting regional languages across Europe. 
Discover more examples in our publication Linguistic diversity in the European Union.

The European Commission also supports language diversity through Horizon Europe research projects on 

• revitalising languages
• strengthening European linguistic capital
• fostering plurilingual identities.