He will take a brief look at the current state of the EU, emphasizing the importance of multilingualism in the EU, the involvement of citizens in European integration and the need to begin building a common European identity in harmony with national and regional identities. He will inform on activities while he was EU Commissioner (2004 – 2009) for promotion of practical multilingualism in the EU, as well as on improving foreign language learning based on the decision of the European Council meeting in Barcelona in 2002. As there has been no improvement in language learning, he will give a view on ways to achieve the EU goals in the future. He will express his opinion on conclusions and recommendations of the “Nitra Declaration”, and documents to three themes produced by the language conference of the Visegrád countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia) on “Perspectives of language communication in the EU” in the city of Nitra on 28-29 July 2016 as an event of the Presidency of Slovakia in the EU Council, which is an initiative contribution of Slovakia to the on-going discussion on the future of Europe.

This video was recorded at the Polyglot Gathering in Bratislava 2017 (www.polyglotbratislava.com).