How would the EU justify not adopting European as its official language? The multilingual European Day of Languages (2001) cultural political issue (of learning to speak at least two foreign languages) is being accepted more and more as a central EU policy, despite its little success in defending Europe’s diversity – as the languages learnt are the two or three more supported by the EU. Following the linguistic FAQ of the official EU website,
1. “[We do not adopt a single official language for the EU] 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.”
Hmmmm… so we are defending with this policy our right to understand what the EU is doing? Sounds good.
BUT, also answering the same frequent questions:
2) “[In this very EU official website] documents of a non legally binding nature are frequently published in English, French and German” – Isn’t this an officious declaration of the three languages actually used in the EU? And, by the way, is it true? The German Government appears often in the press complaining about many documents not being translated into its language, while the French would like to see its language written and spoken as often as English in non-official situations…
3) And “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“. Ok, so – following 2) – we pay the price of two coffees a year? For having thousands of translators using mainly English? Then give us all back the price of one and a half coffee, and choose officially only that language. Or are all these obscured policies and expenditure just about (officially) defending all languages, but (officiously) accepting only one, while establishing levels with the rest (after its influence within the EU)?
4) And what about stateless languages? [while the Spanish Government has recognized Catalan, Basque and Galician,] “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“. Now, is the EU really unable to defend equal linguistic rights alike? Is then the Union somehow independent of its Member States?
Is the EU already a Union of Nations or still just a commercial treaty? I – and many others – believe what we were told, that the EEC was substituted by a political Union since Maastricht; in it, more reticent States like the UK can still have a special (commercial and political) relationship whithout hindering EU’s political unity, our common aim of becoming a single Country formed by different Nations, where the Parliament is able to decide over the Union’s competences. But even the language policy shows the EU is still something like a States-led European Commonwealth, where States are put side by side to vote all decisions, instead of adding them all under a common legal, economic and political framework to improve our social unity and welfare.
