Salvaguardia del pluralismo culturale e linguistico come parte dell'identità europea

Can the concept of European identity together with that of national identity – as provided for in current EU law - satisfy the needs of present-day multicultural society, which implies that cultural and linguistic pluralism are safeguarded, promoted and/or protected? This is the basic question to which this work tries to answer. After having deepened the concept of collective identity from the general theory of law point of view, we tried to apply the results to the EU law. The coexistence in the latter of both of the European and of the national identities was interpreted by the doctrine in two senses: a) in a de iure condito approach, the double concept would be founded on past cultural legacies; b) in a de iure condendo approach, the same double concept should only be seen in a future perspective. From a positive law standpoint, then following the first approach, one asked if the European Union is a legal system aimed exclusively at the past culture, or if, after all, it offers ideas aimed at opening up to today’s multicultural society. From the analysis of the primary EU law, one could check that both of art. 22 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU (Charter of Nice) and of art. 167, par. 1, of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union-TFEU do not refer to the concept of cultural pluralism, that would imply cultural choices coming from below, from spontaneous communities, but to the concept of cultural diversity, that instead meant going towards cultural choices determined from above, from the State or from other public authorities. Therefore, the EU law approach to cultural diversity was (is) top-down. Indeed, if we refer to “the cooperation [of the EU] with third countries and the competent international organizations in the sphere of culture”, as stated in par. 3 of the same art. 167 TFEU, it allows us to give a different interpretation to the concept of cultural diversity. This was possible by observing the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, approved by the European Union in 2006. The Convention made it clear that cultural diversity is a matter for local communities, formed by the same individuals who practice it, according to the bottom-up approach. Then, the international law, recognized by the EU law, considers this concept as a product from the bottom, deriving from cultural collective identities and not from public authorities. In this way we could assimilate the concept of cultural diversity to the concept of cultural (and linguistic) pluralism. In conclusion, the current EU law allows us to deal with both of the cultural collective identity aimed at the past, managed by public authorities, and of the cultural collective identity aimed at the future left in the hands of spontaneous communities. The latter allows us to respond, at least in nuce, to the needs of the today multicultural society, from which Europe can not ignore. On the level of public actions, cultural diversity – as a fruit of freedom of man – makes use of the promotion and of the safeguard. Regarding linguistic diversity, to which the EU law always responds with promotion, in reality protection action should be granted, if it is true that linguistic diversity is a real fundamental human right.