On Thursday, November 28, a Russian lawmaker said that Russian State Duma, the lower house of Russian Parliament, would consider initiative to make Russian language an official language of the EU.

      The drive could become a reality after changes to EU rules allowed citizens to propose adding languages as long as they could collect one million signatures, Defense committee member Alexey Zhuravlyov told a roundtable.

      Zhuravlyov said the signature-collection drive should not become a big problem, as there were large Russian communities in the EU and that the initiative would be supposed by a federal agency that promotes international cooperation.

      Currently, there are 24 languages which have an official status in the EU. There are also about 6 million Russian-speaking people living on the EU's territory.