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French Basque Country or Northern Basque Country (in Basque, Iparralde or Ipar Euskal Herria, in French, Pays basque or Pays basque nord; in Gascon: Bascoat) is the Northern part of Euskal Herria (Basque Country). Located within France, it covers the western side of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques in the region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine. It is made up of three historic provinces: Labourd (in Basque, Lapurdi), Lower Navarre (Basque: Nafarroa Beherea or Behe Nafarroa) and Soule (Basque: Zuberoa). The city with the largest population is Bayonne, which has 309,723 residents that live on 3,039 km2 of territory.

Its administration is organized into the Communauté d'agglomération du Pays Basque (Basque: Euskal Hirigune Elkargoa).

Geography
It is bordered by the Landes department in the North (the border is largely formed by the Adour River), the historic region of Béarn in the East, Spain in the South, whose natural border is formed by the Bidasoa River and the Pyrenees (the provinces of Gipuzkoa and Navarre), and the Cantabrian Sea in the West.

Territory
The department of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques is divided into three districts or arrondissements: The Arrondissement of Bayonne, the Arrondissement of Oloron-Sainte-Marie, and the Arrondissement of Pau. French Basque Country includes all of Bayonne and Canton of Montagne Basque in Oloron-Sainte-Marie. Additionally, French Basque Country includes the following territories in Béarn: Esquiule, Aramits, Géronce, and Arette (in the Canton of Oloron-Sainte-Marie-1).

French Basque Country included three pre-existing historic territories before the departmental division of France in 1789, with a few modifications:


 * Labourd (in French: “Labourt”, in Basque: “Lapurdi” and in Gascon: “Labord”). Bayonne is conventionally considered part of Labourd, but it stopped belonging to it in the 13th century. A few municipalities are considered a part of Lapurdi and are a part of the “Council of Elects” and the “Council of the Development of French Basque Country” but did not belong the historic region of Lapurdi. Among them are Boucau, which belonged to the department of Landes until 1857, Bardos, Guiche, and Urt (which was united administratively to Lapurdi in 1763 but seceded judicially from the Seneschal of Came (Bidache). Lapurdi is located within the Arrondissement of Bayonne.
 * Lower Navarre (in French: “Basse-Navarre”, in Basque: “Behe Nafarroa”, in Gascon: “Baisha Navarra”). Arancou, Came, and Sames belong to Lower Navarre and are a part of the Council of Elects and the Council of the Development of French Basque Country. They were dependent on the Seneschal of Dax during the Ancien Régime, not dependent on Navarre. Bidache, a territory that was a sovereign principality during the Ancien Régime, did not belong to Navarre although it is also a part of the Council of Elects and the Council of the Development of French Basque Country. On the other hand, Escos (a town in the Salies-de-Béarn canton) has usually not been considered a part of Lower Navarre, even though it belonged to Navarre during the Ancien Régime. Additionally, it has not entered the Councils of French Basque Country. Lower Navarre is located within the Arrondissement of Bayonne.
 * Soule (in French: “Soule”, in Basque: “Zuberoa”, and in Gascon: “Sola”). Esquiule (a Béarnese community during the Ancien Régime) is usually included on the list of Souletin populations, since its population is historically Basque-speaking. However, it became part of Béarn and has not requested admission into the Councils of French Basque Country. Soule is divided between the districts of Bayonne and Oloron-Sainte-Marie, where the majority of its communes are located. These 35 Souletin communes of the Arondissement of Oloron-Sainte-Marie are a part of a Municipal Commonwealth, the “Communauté de Communes de Soule-Xiberoa” (in Souletin: “Xiberoko Herri Alkargoa”).

Cities
The most important city in the territory is Bayonne (in French: “Bayonne”, in Basque and Gascon: “Baiona”). The ancient Lapurdum romana, from which the toponyms Labourd, Lapurdi or Labourd originate, is a part of the Biarrits-Anglet-Bayona agglomeration community (BAB) alongside Biarritz and Anglet (Basque: “Angelu”), the most populated urban space in the territory. It is the political capital of its subprefecture and economic capital of the largest region, which includes French Basque Country and he south of Landes. Other important places are Saint-Jean-de-Luz (Basque: Donibane Lohizune), Hendaye (Hendaye or Hendaia), Sainte-Jean-Pied-de-Port (Donibane Garazi), the capital of Lower Navarre, and Mauleón (Mauléon or Maule), the capital of Soule.

Population
According to data from 2001, about 260,000 residents live in French Basque Country, the majority live in coastal areas. Hence, 220,000 are in Labourd. The populations of the interior territories of Lower Navarre and Soule are decreasing, while the population of Labourd is increasing, especially in the conurbation area (Communauté d’agglomération) BAB (Bayonne, Biarritz, and Anglet), whose population is around 110,000 residents.

Institutional Reform Proposal
A slow but continuous French institutional evolution has been produced as a response to the historical vindications of French Basque Country. By an order from January 29, 1997 from the prefect of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, a “Basque Country” was recognized as a Pays, according to the French administrative category, in accordance with the laws called: the Pascua Law from February 4, 1995, and the Voynet Law from June 25, 1999. These are based on the notion of a country in the traditional sense, as a social belonging to a place, culture, etc., promoting the organization and development of the territory in a global manner.

The creation of an institution of greater substance than what was represented by the geographical organization of pays and more specifically of a Basque department, has been a constant element during that last decades in elected posts for the main political parties, with representation from the French Socialist Party, The Republicans, and nationalist parties. 64% of Basque-French mayors support such a creation. The Association des Elus is an association that groups political posts such as regional councilors, general councilors and mayors of French Basque Country, from both political spectrums, whose goal is to achieve the division of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department into Basque and Béarnese departments respectively.

The Council of the Development of French Basque Country was created in 1994, and in 1995 the Council of elects of French Basque Country was created.

On January 15, 2005 the Euskal Herriko Laborantza Ganbara (http://www.ehlgbai.org/es), was created as a house for the representation and promotion of the interests of livestock farmers and agriculturists of French Basque Country, promoted by the agrarian union, Laborarien Batasuna. Initially, this institution wasn’t recognized, and its function was illegal. Now, its function is regulated and receives subventions from the Regional Council of Aquitaine.

In 2012, the French government proposed the creation of a single commonwealth for all of the towns in French Basque Country, under two conditions: being approved by at least half of the 158 communes in the historic territory, and that at least half of the nearly 300,000 residents be represented within this historic territory. After a process of municipal meetings, on May 2, 2016, both conditions were met.

On January 1, 2017, the Agglomerate Community of Basque Country, was created: an intercommunal cooperation movement (EPCI), which promotes a greater level of autonomy, with the French administrative categorization as an official territorial administrative structure with greater abilities than a Pays, but fewer than a French department, and that is made up of a union of ten commonwealths and 157 of the 159 Basque communes, plus one Béarnese community.

Prehistoric Era
The oldest human remains that are known of in the territory of the current French Basque Country are approximately 150,000 years old. Some houses have been found on the terraces of the Adour River, in Ilbarritz (Bidart), Sainte-Pierre-d’Irube, and Mouguerre. In the Middle Paleolithic era (700,000-100,000 years ago), neanderthals inhabited this area. At the beginning they lived in the open air and later in caves, like the one in Isturits. Cro-magnon people appeared during the Upper Paleolithic (9000-50,000 years ago).

Many artistic objects from the Magdalenian era (9000-14,000 years ago) have been found in Isturits.

The most well-known object found is a bird bone with three holes in it in the shape of a txistu. Moving into the Mesolithic era, humans began to live outside of caves, despite the fact that these were still used until a much later date. Also, during this era, the arts of ceramics, agriculture, and raising livestock were discovered.

During the Neolithic era (4000-3000 B.C.E.) new techniques for the use of metals and agriculture arrived.

The Roman Era
The populations of Aquitania were defeated in the year 56 B.C.E. by Marcus Licinius Crassus' son, Julius Caesar's lieutenant. Caesar and the geographer and historian Strabo distinguished the Aquitanians from the Gauls clearly by their languages.

By the end of the 3rd century, with the administrative reform of emperor Diocletian, the province of Aquitania was divided into three (it extended to the Loire River) and nine of the civitates of different tribes in the region made up Novempopulania or Aquitania novempopulana, also known as Aquitania III when it was a Roman province during the late Roman Empire. Its name in Latin means the nine peoples, as a reference to the nine tribes that inhabited it:


 * The Tarbelli lived along the coast of Labourd and Chalosse, near Aquae Tarbellicae (Dax)
 * The Ausci in the Gers and the city of Elimberrum (Auch)
 * The Bigerriones from Bigorre in Turba (Tarbes)
 * The Convenae in the Comminges, Lugdunum (Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges)
 * The Consorani, who occupied the Couserans (Saint-Lizier)
 * The Lactorates in Lomagne, Lactura (Lectoure)
 * The Elusates, in lower Armagnac with the city of Elusa (Eauze)
 * The Vocates ( Vassei or Vocates ) in the southeast of Gironde or Bazadais, with its capital in Cossium (Bazas)
 * The Boii in Pays de Buch, lived in the city of Lamothe (Le Teich)

The region reached a high level of Romanization, as many of the toponyms with Latin or Celtic suffixes, such as -acum or -anum, demonstrate. In the north of the current French Basque Country, these (toponyms) multiply: Loupiac, Gaillan, etc. However, in the southeast of the territory, the less Romanized area, toponyms with Basque suffixes are abundant: -ousse, -ous, -ost, and -oz, such as Biscarrosse and Almandoz for example; some inscriptions have words similar to Basque on them.

Middle Ages
After the Germanic and Slavic invasions that caused the fall of the Roman Empire, the ancient province began to be known under the term Wasconia according to texts by Frankish chroniclers, mainly Gregory of Tours and the Chronicle of Fredegar from the 6th century, and was differentiated from the trans-pyrenean territories that later chroniclers from the Ravena Cosmograph named Spanoguasconia.

In the year 418, the Visigoths moved to the region due to a federation pact or foedus made with Rome, but they had to leave in 507 as a consequence of their defeat against the Merovingian dynasty belonging to King Clovis I in the battle of Vouillé. After Clovis I’s death in 511, the heirs to the Merovingian throne organized part of their northern possessions with regards to the main entities of Neustria and Austrasia under the direct control of the sovereigns, while the rest of their territorial possessions were organized into autonomous entities led by the powerful officials of the kingdom: counts, dukes, patricians, and vice chancellors according to the traditional Merovingian decentralized power structure.

In Wasconia and the Pyrenean periphery in Vasconum saltus, armed incursions and confrontations with Merovingian officials were frequent during the last third of the 6th century. Venantius Fortunatus' chronicles cite the fights sustained up until 580 with the Frankish king Chilperic I and the comes from Bordeaux, Galactorio, while Gregory of Tours wrote about the incursions Duke Austrobald faced in 587 with posterity to the defeat of Duke Bladastes in 574 in Soule.

The Frankish kings Theuderic II and Theudebert II decided to build the March of the Duchy of Gascony in 602, with which, according to Iñaki Bazán, they would exercise better military control over the area such as better tax collection and judicial administration, placing the Genial Duke at the forefront. Later, between 635-638, King Dagobert I set out on a campaign for the repression of the Vascon inhabitants that would allow their submission.

In the 8th century a second autonomous Duchy of Gascony was created, and by the end of the 9th century Guillermo Sanchez was named the duke of all Vascons. Some years later, Guy Geoffroy united the duchies of Vasconia and Aquitania (with the Poitiers county).

The evangelization of the territory that today comprises French Basque Country was slow and precarious. Beginning in the 9th century, and in part due to the peregrination to Santiago de Compostela, a stable and long-lasting ecclesiastic organization was implanted in the region. The most important trails leading to Santiago passed through the region, and this greatly influenced the development of the trails and the villas in the territory.

Politics and Institutions
Small political formations began to emerge in different Pyrenean valleys, among them are Labourd, Sola, and the small valleys and countries that later formed Lower Navarre.

In 1023, Sancho the Great of Navarre founded the vice county of Labourd, with its capital in Bayonne, which gave vassals to the King and Queen of Navarre until 1193. All vacant land, forests, and waters belonged to the King and everyone had the right to use them, whether they were nobles or not. Nobles did not have any feudal rights and justice rested solely in the hands of the King. The Biltzar, the only existing assembly, was in charge of distributing taxes and charges, and its delegates were chosen by the etxeko-jaun of the parishes. Furthermore, parish assemblies that administrated the collective goods of each parish existed. In 1215, Bayonne separated from Labourd, ruling from that moment on through its council. From the end of the 12th century until the French Revolution, Ustaritz was the capital of Labourd. Bayonne continued to be the economic hub of the area until the 19th century. However, above all, it was the port of Navarre that connected it to the North of Europe.

The Viscounty of Soule was probably founded by Sancho VI Guillermo, the Duke of Gascony. Since the 12th century, the viscounts of Soule sought protection from the King of Navarre against the viscount of Béarn and the King of England. The Great Body was the assembly where nobles and clerics met, while the Silbiet was the assembly where all the etzeko-jauns met, similar to that of Biltzar in Labourd.

The small valleys or countries that made up Lower Navarre went under the domain of the King and Queen of Navarre between 1194 and 1245. From the Middle Ages, the warden of Sainte-Jean-Pied-de-Port exercised authority and the Receiver of Income gathered taxes and paid expenses. There was a court for every country, similar to Biltzar or Silbiet, and parish and neighborhood assemblies also existed.

The Renaissance and the Witch Trials
The 16th century was probably the most tragic for the inhabitants of French Basque Country in its history. The recurring French-Spanish conflict between 1512 and 1659 and the French Wars of Religion that lasted 30 years sowed terror and misery.

On the other hand, the accusations made in the Parliament of Bordeaux motivated Labourd in sending the councelor Pierre de Lancre. He burned around 200 women, children and priests by forcing them to confess through torture. Pierre de Lancre was responsible for the witch hunt in Labourd. He believed women had a sinful nature, and that they were so dangerous that one judge alone could not judge a woman because men are weak. He said that a tribunal made up of several men was necessary to do so.

However, after overcoming the disasters suffered, a sort of renaissance was lived during the 17th century. Among other things, Rabelais published his Gargantua and Pantagruel and Etxepare wrote the first printed text in Basque.

Territories of the French Basque Country and the French Monarchy
With the conquest of the castles of Mauléon and Bayonne in 1449 and 1451 respectively, Labourd and Sola were under the domain of the French crown. When Henry III of Navarre took the French throne at the end of the 16th century (as Henry IV), Lower Navarre was incorporated into the French Royal patrimony (becoming the King of France and Navarre).

The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars
Louis XVI of France summoned the Estates General of the Kingdom of France to discuss problems of state. This assembly united the three estates: nobles, clerics, and the common people (the third estate). In Labourd’s case, the three estates met in the Ustaritz church to select delegates for the Estates General. The third estate chose the Garat brothers as delegates. They wrote the Cahiers de doléances, and the three estates agreed on the majority of them: they insisted on guaranteeing particular characteristics of the country, above all its language, and the restoration of the institutions. Furthermore, the clergy wanted a bishop that knew Basque. The delegates from Soule wrote similar grievances to those of Labourd.

Lower Navarre was not part of the Kingdom of France and it did not send delegates to the General States; however, it wrote a Cahiers de doléances that it sent to the King, in which they asked for the abolition of the abuses by the Bourbons.

In the meantime, the Estates General proclaimed the Constituent Assembly and abolished the privileges of the provinces. Contrary to these decisions, the Biltzar of Labourd asked that an administrative division be created to unite the Basques from the three Basque-French provinces. However, following the purpose of shaping foreign departments to the preexisting political and historic divisions (considered by revolutionaries as an element that allowed the preservation of the privileges of the local aristocracy), in 1790 the Lower Pyrenees department project arrived, uniting the ancient Basque countries with Béarn. The reorganization favored the Bayonne bishopric that included the entire department (up to the Lescar and Oloron coasts that disappeared, and part of the Dax ).

The mutual hostility and lack of trust between the new regime and the European monarchies led to the creation of the General European Coalition against revolutionary France. At first, French Basque Country stayed at the margins of the conflict, since Spain stayed neutral, but in 1793, France declared war on Spain. On May 31, 1793, the Spanish General Ventura Caró took Hendaye and found some sympathies in certain municipalities in the south of France. This, alongside the many rebellions in other French regions, caused a burst of paranoia in the authorities. In 1794, the “representatives of the people” Pinet and Cavaignac ordered the internment of thousands of Labortans in concentration camps, many of whom died. They said that Basque made the diffusion of revolutionary propaganda difficult and that Basque people were too Catholic and opposed to the revolutionary centralism. The political situation improved when General Moncey led the French to a counterattack in June of 1794, expelling the Spanish, and even entering Gipuzkoa. Pinet and Cavaignac went to Spain to manage conquered territory, courting the possibility of annexing it to France. After the fall of Robespierre, General Moncey forced the removal of Pinet and Cavaignac, who had managed to have a falling out with the Gipuzkoans. Due to this, they threw themselves into a desperate guerilla war, an antecedent to that of 1808. On July 22, the Treaty of Basilea was signed and the conflict ended, giving rise to a period of relative peace and prosperity.

Napoleon was attracted to the Basque-French peasant masses, guaranteeing them the ownership of the lands obtained during the revolution. When Napoleon invaded Spain, one of the Garat brothers sent him several reports advising him to establish, within Napoleonic Europe, a federation that included the Basques of the South and North, called New Phenicia. Napoleon commissioned a book on the Basques, but he never took this kind of geopolitical fantasy seriously. He only wanted to use the Basque-French people as a “hook” to annex Navarre and Spanish Basque Country. To that end, he created several military governments in the North of Spain, as a preliminary step to annexation. One of them covered Navarre, and the other Basque Country. However, the resistance of the local population prevented the project. The guerrillas launched attacks and even to the other side of the border, causing tensions in French Basque Country. During the last phase of the war, the allied forces led by the Duke of Wellington crossed the Bidasoa (October 7, 1813) and French Basque Country became the stage for harsh battles until Napoleon’s abdication.

The 19th Century to the Present
After the French Revolution, political life in French Basque Country was scarce; until present day, it has remained conservative and many times favored conventional French centralism. There is also a call from various political sectors to create a Basque department of its own, differentiated from the rest of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques (a name taken by the Lower Pyrenees in 1969). Emigration to America has been the most important event of the last 150 years: 150,000 French people emigrated between 1857 and 1877, of which 31,000 came from the Lower Pyrenees department; between 1885 and 1887, 25,000 French emigrated, 5,633 from the Lower Pyrenees. Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay were the destination for the majority of the emigrants. There were also those who emigrated to Chile. By the mid-19th century however, the Gold Rush in California incited Basques to emigrate.

The railroad arrived in Bayonne in 1857, in 1864 in Hendaye. In addition, Napoleon III and his wife spent the summer in Biarritz. It was the beginning of tourism. The First World War (1914-1918) left a deep mark on French Basque Country: 6,000 dead and a marked influence on French nationalism.

During this last century, French Basque Country has fallen into painful economic (due to the decline in traditional economic activities), demographic and cultural situations. Agriculture and livestock are still very important. However, the towns on the interior are being emptied. Bayonne holds almost all of the industry of French Basque Country, but the industries that revolve around the port are having a hard time, since it is too small. Tourism, in the beginning reduced to the coast, is opening up to the interior, but it is still limited.

Languages
In the North and Northeast of French Basque Country (fundamentally in the Lower Adour area), aside from French, Basque and Gascon are spoken, in cities like Bayonne, Biarritz, Anglet, Boucau, Mouguerre, Urt, La Bastide-Clairence or Bidache. Gascon is a dialect of Occitan from the northern border of the region. Due to this, the area is considered by the Occitan people as part of Gascony.

On the coast, where the major Basque-French cities are located, the predominant language is French; for example, in the Bayonne-Anglet-Biarritz agglomeration, 10% of the population speaks Basque. However, in the interior of French Basque Country, where there is a rural environment, Basque is the predominant language, spoken by most of the population.

Basque
Basque, a continuum of Aquitaine (or Proto-basque) spoken in this region since before the Roman Era, does not have official status but it does have some acknowledgement, so that it can be studied in school and be used as a secondary language by the institutions in the area.

According to the current division created by Koldo Zuazo, there are two dialects spoken in French Basque Country: Souletin (Basque: zuberera) and the Navarro-Lapurdian dialect (Basque: nafar-lapurtera), whose delimitaciones don’t correspond to the three Basque provinces. The spoken languages of Labourd and Lower Navarre are part of a linguistic continuum without established borders. It ends in the Amikuze or Mixe Country region and the Soule province, where a dialect with great cohesion and defined traits can be found: Souletin. In Zuazo’s opinion, this may be due to the fact that this territory has been separated administratively from the other two, and that the differences in speech have been intensified by the lack of interaction.

The literary tradition in French Basque Country, especially in Labourd, has had great importance in the history of the Basque language. The first Basque writers on that side of the Pyrenees took the language from the Labourd coast as their base language for literature, more specifically the triangle formed by Ciboure, Sare, and Sainte-Jean-de-Luz. The language has evolved in the literary plane from classical Labourd dialect used by writers in the Sare School, to the literary Navarro-Lapurdian dialect, a sort of Basque unified in French Basque Country made concrete by a grammar book by Pierres Lafitte Ithurralde in the 1940s. In many ways it is considered one of the predecessors of Standard Basque, and it currently survives as an unrecognized version of unified Basque. In other words, it is a unified Basque with lexical and morphological elements unique to the region.

The Navarro-Lapurdian dialect and Souletin have common characteristics that distinguish them from other Basque dialects, such as the pronunciation of /h/ (according to Koldo Mitxelena, it was lost around the 13th century in the Pyrenees territories due to Aragonese influence and became extinct on the Labourd coast around the 19th century, according to Louis Lucien Bonaparte), the differences in speech in the grammatical cases of Nor (absolutive) and Nork (ergative), and the use of the root *eradun in front of *edun used in speech on the other side of the Bidasoa (deraut vs. diot). The Royal Academy of the Basque Language took into account the four centuries of literary tradition of this region when it began the unification project.

According to the theory of waves or gradients, the Souletin and Biscayan dialects are the dialects that have conserved the largest number of archaisms due to their geographical location, but at the same time, they had the greatest influence from other languages (Mitxelena). This is why Souletin is considered innovative with regards to its phonology (influenced mainly by Gascon), but conservative in its lexicon and morphology. Souletin relies on a written literary tradition of great importance, but something worth noting is the oral tradition, since ancient ballads and songs have been passed on from generation to generation up until current times, being rescued by musicians and singer-songwriters in the second half of the 20th century. The Soule people has a firm popular theatre tradition, and pastorals and masques reflect this. The plays are performed by entire towns, who turn into an instrument for the reaffirmation of Souletin identity, which has suffered a worrying demographic decline.

Acknowledgement of Basque and Gascon
Neither Basque nor any of the other regional French languages, like Alsatian, Breton, or Occitan, have official recognition in France. According to the second article of the French Constitution, “the language of the Republic is French” and, despite many attempts to add “with respect to regional languages that are a part of our patrimony” to the text by 44 deputies in 2006, the proposal was denied by 57 votes against the 44 votes in favor.

Despite this, bilingual signage exists at the municipal level for traffic (trilingual in cases like Bayonne).

Below is an extract from the report of the “Observatory of Linguistic Rights of Euskal Herria” ''':"In the French State (Labourd, Lower Navarre, and Soule provinces). With the constitutional reform of 1992 France declared French the language of the Republic and, although Article 2.1 the Constitution proclaims the beginning of equality, it only recognizes legal protection for French, leaving the rest of the languages of the Republic in a state/environment of tolerance. Other legal texts that strengthen the status of Frence are Law 75-1349, from December 31, 1975, and the law that replaced it, Law 94-665, from August 4, 1994, known as Ley Toubon, relative à l’emploi de la langue française. Article 21 of the Toubon Law states that the establishments made with this law will not be applied with prejudice of the norm, and legislation corresponding to the regional languages of France.--- and that such a law does not go against the use of those languages. But that article lacks usefulness because no legislation or norm exists on the regional languages of France. In order to give the Basque language legal recognition, it would be necessary to modify the Constitution of the Republic. French speakers of Basque do not then have any recognized linguistic rights. And thus no guaranteed linguistic rights."

- Observatory of the Linguistic Rights of Euskal Herria

Since 1994, the ikastolas are recognized as educational establishments, with an association model, although they don’t receive any state aid. Professors in the ikastolas are under the responsibility of the French Education Ministry. In 2000, the Basque-French federation of ikastolas, Seaska, decided to end negociations with the French educational administration to integrate ikastolas into the public education system of France, since the conditions it set did not guarantee their education model. Currently, the ikastolas are financed largely by the parents in a cooperative system and by various activities organized in favor of Basque, such as Herri Urrats (Popular Step), which Basque speakers in Spain and France attend to do a walk for solidarity. Thanks to the participation of individuals, companies, and communities, Herri Urrats, in collaboration with Seaska, has allowed for the opening of 20 elementary schools, three highschools and an institution for secondary education since 1984.

In 2003, the Basque government and the members of the Department of Public Works of French Basque Country signed the protocols that allowed the collaboration between the various Basque organisms and institutions to encourage a linguistic policy on both sides of the Spanish-French border; the Public Institution of Basque (Euskararen Erakunde Publikoa) was born due to this accord in French Basque Country.