The counselor of Interior, Public Function and Justice of the Government of Navarra, Inma Jurío, has reiterated that the assessment of Basque in the organic staff of the Foral Police will be carried out considering that this language "is not co-official throughout Navarra" and that "the proportionality and the sociolinguistic reality that governs in each of the areas" of the Foral Community will be applied.
In responding in the plenary session of the Parliament of Navarra to a question posed by EH Bildu, Jurío emphasized that "from the Government of Navarra what will continue to be done and what has always been done is to comply with the current legality."
The counselor has indicated to the abertzale formation that "we have a different perception" regarding the role of Basque, understanding that EH Bildu "does not accept the zoning and the sociolinguistic reality of Navarra, and assumes that Basque is co-official throughout Navarra." She recalled that "that is not possible today" and that "we have a merit decree, which is based on another previous decree, after various rulings from the Superior Court of Justice of Navarra that forced us to make modifications in the way of assessing Basque in the different positions of the Administration."
Regarding the specific situation in the autonomous body, Jurío detailed that there are currently 28 positions in the Foral Police where Basque is listed as a mandatory requirement and 314 positions where it is counted as merit, either exclusively or along with other community languages. As she pointed out, "we have rulings that force us not to make a generalized assessment of Basque in the job positions, but individualized."
Likewise, she emphasized that Basque is "one of the own languages of Navarra, but zoning establishes where it will be considered a working language or service language, and we want to establish a proportionality of the positions in a community where Basque is not official throughout the territory."
For her part, the EH Bildu parliamentarian Eneka Maiz has recalled that on September 23, a representation of the Personnel Commission appeared in the Parliament of Navarra and raised "for the first time claims about the Basque language" in the field of the Foral Police. She explained that "it was a qualified and broad representation of the Foral Police and what they said is that the foral decree modifying the organic staff established knowledge of the Basque language as a merit for only one third of the positions. In the majority of positions, the Basque language is not taken into account in any way."
Maiz has stated that, in her opinion, the response of the counselor "does not reflect the sociolinguistic reality of Navarra nor in any way the linguistic rights of the citizens." In her intervention, she added that "it rains on wet ground. The police model must be one of proximity, it must be at the disposal of the citizens, and in view of the functions that the police have, it is surprising that it is not guaranteed that the Foral Police use both languages."