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Cornwall2000 Meeting Update

It was standing room only last night [Wednesday] in Camborne's Centenary Chapel as John Angarrack of CORNWALL 2000 addressed representatives from the Gorseth, Cornish Solidarity, the Cornish Stannary Parliament, FUEN, local councillors and various Cornish language groups.
One purpose of the meeting was to remind everyone that in November 2002 the Government announced that it had extended the provisions of the Council of Europe Charter for Regional and Minority Languages to Cornish.

Mr Angarrack explained that the primary reason for calling the meeting was because two years had passed and little effective progress appeared to have been made. Although a Strategy Group had been formed, there was still no policy in place, no effective administration created, no core funding allocated and no timetabled and costed strategy written.

Members of the Strategy Group who were present agreed that progress had been slow, but that this had been largely due to the ODPM dragging its feet. They agreed that more needed to be done quicker, and suggested that meetings like this would help re-focus the governments mind on the matter.

The meeting unanimously passed the following resolution:

"In order to create a sound, long term, financial and organisational basis for implementing the Charter the Government should act quickly to establish a clear course of action and chain of responsibility. This could be done through existing administrative structures or by establishing a new Non-Departmental Public Authority tailor made for that purpose. For our part we will set up a 'CharterWatch' group to monitor implementation, lobby central government and report regularly to the Council of Europe."

Mr Angarrack reminded everyone that the Government are obligated to take "resolute action" when implementing the Charter. By June of 2005 it must also be able to demonstrate to a Council of Europe inspection team what progress had been made.

Mr Angarrack promised those in attendance that this message will be conveyed to officials from Government Office South West when they meet a delegation from CORNWALL 2000 later this month.