FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions about the European Union's policy on languages

1. How many languages does the European Union work in?

The European Union has 23 official languages: Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Irish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish and Swedish.

2. Why does the European Union use so many official languages?

The EU is a democratic organisation so it has to communicate with its citizens in their languages, not to mention the Member States' governments and civil services, businesses and other organisations all over the EU. The public have a right to know what is being done in their name and must also be able to play an active part without having to learn other people's languages. And the European Union passes laws which are directly binding on everyone in the EU, so everybody in the EU, both citizens and the courts, must be able to understand them, which means they must be available in all the official languages. The use of the official languages enhances the transparency, legitimacy and effectiveness of the EU and its institutions. The legal basis for the EU's language policy is Council Regulation No 1 of 1958 determining the languages to be used by the European Economic Community, as amended, which lists the official languages and specifies when and for what purposes they are to be used. The European Community Treaty also enshrines in primary law the principle that the EU institutions must communicate with its correspondents in the Member States in the official language chosen by the correspondents.

3. Who decides which are to be the official languages of the European Union?

Each country, before it joined, stipulated which language it wanted to have used as an official language for EU purposes. The agreement on this matter is then recorded in the Act of Accession. In some cases not all the languages which have official status within a Member State itself were put forward for official EU status.

4. Is the EU planning to reduce the number of official languages?

No. In the interests of democracy and transparency it has opted to maintain the existing system. No Member State government is willing to relinquish its own language, and candidate countries want to have theirs added to the list.

5. Is every document generated by the EU translated into all the official languages?

By no means. Legislation and documents of major public importance or interest are produced in all 23 official languages, but that accounts for a minority of the institutions' work. Other documents (e.g. communications with the national authorities, Decisions addressed to particular individuals or entities and correspondence) are translated only into the languages needed. For internal purposes the EU institutions are allowed by law to choose their own language arrangements. The European Commission, for example, conducts its internal business in three languages, English, French and German, and goes fully multilingual only for public information and communication purposes. The European Parliament, on the other hand, has Members who need working documents in their own languages, so its document flow is fully multilingual from the outset.

6. What about other languages spoken in Member States e.g. Luxembourgish, Catalan, Welsh, Basque, Breton, Sardinian?

By agreement with the Spanish Government, certain texts are available in Catalan/Valencian, Basque and Galician.

Luxembourgish, the national language of Luxembourg, and regional languages of some Member States such as Welsh, Sami, Sardinian and Breton have not been put forward for official EU language status by the governments of the respective Member States.

7. Why not adopt a single official language for the European Union?

Because it would cut off most people in the EU from an understanding of what the EU was doing. Whichever language were chosen for such a role, most EU citizens would not understand it well enough to comply with its laws or avail themselves of their rights, or be able to express themselves in it well enough to play any part in EU affairs. And which language would you choose? - The EU language with the largest number of native speakers is German. But it is not widely used outside Germany and Austria. - The EU languages with the largest number of native speakers in the world are Spanish and Portuguese - but most of those speakers are not in Europe. - French is the official language, or one of the official languages, of three Member States, it is spoken in many parts of the world and taught in many EU schools: but it is much more widely known in southern and western Europe than in the north or east of the continent. - Of the EU languages, English is the most widely known as either the first or second language in the EU: but recent surveys show that still fewer than half the EU population have any usable knowledge of it.

8. What does the EU's policy of multilingualism cost?

The most readily quantifiable cost of the EU's policy of working in 20 official languages is the cost of its language services, i.e. the translators and interpreters who make the policy function. The latest figure (2005) for the total annual cost of these is € 1 123 million, which is 1% of the annual general budget of the European Union. Divided by the population of the EU, this comes to € 2.28 per person per year.

9. What languages is the EUROPA website available in?

EUROPA aims to provide you with the information you are looking for in your own language or in a language you can understand, depending on the nature of the information. Official documents are available in at least the languages which were official at the date of publication. Other documents, of a non legally binding nature, are frequently published in English, French and German. General information on the homepage, the sections immediately accessible from the homepage and the indexes are, as far as possible, available in the twenty languages which were the official languages of the European Union before 1 January 2007: Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish and Swedish.. General information in the three new official languages of the European Union of 27 (Bulgarian, Irish and Romanian) will become available as the necessary translation capacity increases. Exceptions to this general rule are only made for information that is urgent or has a very short life. Specialised information is generally available in at least two languages, the ones most commonly used by the audience the information is intended for.

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Last updated on 01/01/2007