Romansh people though with ever-increasing sovereignty and recognition at the federal level to the point that Romansh is now considered one of the official federal languages of the Swiss Confederation. The Romansh national leadership in Switzerland expressly stated its interest in Switzerland joining the European Union in terms of a pro-European stance and not an anti-Swiss-Confederation one, openly recognizing that the Confederation, though dominated by the German Swiss and with large Swiss French and Swiss Italian contingents, had sheltered the tiny Romansh minority population for nearly 200 years, never engaging in programs to erase their identity or language nor forcing them to
Romansh language power of the central government of Grisons, which had always used German as its administrative language. In addition, many Romansh-speakers migrated to the larger cities, which were German-speaking, while speakers of German settled in Romansh villages. Moreover, economic changes meant that the Romansh-speaking villages, which had mostly been self-sufficient, engaged in more frequent commerce with German-speaking regions. Also, improvements in the infrastructure made travel and contact with other regions much easier than it had been. Finally, the rise of tourism made knowledge of German an economic necessity in many areas, while the agricultural sector, which had been a traditional domain