What für ein gâchis!: Multilingualism in the European Institutions

By Eleonora Pizzini, 7 minutes

Working in or for one of the European Institutions implies, in practice, a very good knowledge of at least two foreign languages. Despite 24 official ones, the so-called procedural languages are just three: English, French and German. How important is it to know at least two of them? And why over time many doubts and malcontent have risen across the choice of these three languages?

The European Union has 24 official languages, still, three of them are considered to be more influential and fundamental in order to work in EU institutions: English, French and German. Beside English, which is generally the first foreign language taught in almost all European countries, this means that, sooner or later, one will also have to learn French or German. Over the years, notably Italy and Spain have raised questions about the choice to limit the procedural languages to just those three, and urged to recognise Italian and Spanish as languages that are as essential as French and German.

The historical process

The first question that comes to mind is then: why, during the creation and development of the Union as we know it now, those three languages were recognized as more important? This article will not take into consideration the most recent argumentation that German and English are languages spoken also outside Germany and the United Kingdom. This is motivated by the fact that in 1958 – when the European Economic Community (EEC) Council’s Regulation N.1: determining the languages to be used by the EEC was approved – the UK, Ireland, Austria and Malta were not among the members of the EEC, and just some minorities spoke German in Italy and Belgium.

The importance of the three languages can be traced back to other influential factors. English has been the lingua franca across the World for many years; among many other causes, we can underline the importance of the British Empire being the greatest coloniser, and the American-British victory in World War II. The importance of French can, at a first glance, also be associated to the victory of WWII and its past as coloniser; however, one of the main difference with English is that the French language as been for long used and it is still fundamental in the diplomatic sphere, possibly also outscoring the value of English in this field. Lastly, for what concerns German, two main arguments can be found to underline its importance in the initial community: first of all, the number of citizens. Despite the internal division, Western Germany alone had a population greater than the Italian one (third biggest funding member) in the 50’s. Secondly, West Germany was already back then a growing and booming economy – i.e. Wirtschaftswunder: the economic miracle. In one sentence, then, English, French and German have had over the years a great importance in Diplomacy, Science and Business.

The current position of EU institutions

These languages have hence been chosen following what can be defined a natural historical course on one side, and, on the other side, the result of a compromise between the single funding members, which all wanted to promote their own language, in order to guarantee practicality and efficiency in the functioning of the, future, EU institutions. 

As the EU's enlargements took place, the question of multilingualism has become more complex over the years. First of all, in certain institutions the procedural languages actually have diminished: the European Central Bank uses essentially just English as the official working language, while the European Court of Justice, despite proceedings can be conducted in any of the EU official languages, mainly uses just French. The Commission and the Parliament make a wide use of English as a procedural language, while French and German are not so common. However, on one side the Commission still highlights the importance of all three of them, while the Parliament, on the opposite side, promotes and encourages the use of all the 24 official languages.

Italy, Spain and the EU institutions’ positions nowadays

Why do negative argumentations against just three procedural languages come into the spotlight every now and then? Recently, because of limitations posed by the European Commission during one of the EPSO procedures (2016), in which the choice of the second language was limited to “German, English or French, as they are the main working languages in EU institutions”. A few months ago, the final verdict from the Court of Justice sided with Italy and Spain, and ruled that this limitation results in unfair procedures. More in general, also because the European Union advertises a multilingual context, but, as it appears, just works with three languages on a common basis. Their adoption indirectly accentuates on the international level the importance of the respective Member State that uses those languages, hence creating dissatisfaction among certain countries, i.e. Spain and Italy,  which do not want to appear as “secondary” countries in terms of international recognition. 

From the Institutions’ side, and above all the European Commission, against the Italian and Spanish stance there is the rationale of additional costs and lost efficiency that adding two more procedural languages would imply. As of now, the costs of translation of legislative and of major public importance or interest documents amount to around €1 billion per year, which represents less than 1% of the EU’s budget. Despite spendings may appear contained, the loss in efficiency of the EU  machine would be substantive, as additional translations would result in more time needed for exchange of documents and their approval.

Beside the international prestige for Spain and Italy’s argumentation, and the costs-related debate about adding one or more procedural languages, why does this matter for “common” citizens?

The case of the 2016 procedure

The aforementioned EPSO procedure of 2016 is an example of why it matters. Procedures for people that want to work in the translation field are of course limited and set specific requirements about languages. However, EPSO tests for other working positions limiting the choice of the second language may result in unfair procedures. The case of 2016 was justified in the competition’s notice by the fact that “English, German and French are the procedural languages of the European Commission”. 

However, after Italy and Spain took the Commission to the Court of Justice, it was recently ruled that the procedure is unlawful, as “it was not demonstrated that that restriction was justified by the interests of the service in recruiting staff who are immediately operational”. Hence in line with the fact that the Commission makes a wide use of English as we presented before.

In the 2016 case, French-speaking and German-speaking citizens were particularly advantaged, as the choice for the first language of the test does not have to be the mother tongue, thus leaving them the possibility to choose their native language as the second language, and granting them the possibility to be shortlisted and access job positions. An example to make this clearer: if an Italian and a German or French citizen were competing in the 2016 procedure, and both would choose English as first language for the test, the Italian citizen would have not met the requirements about the languages for the procedure and be disqualified. Why choose English as a first language and the native one as second? Because the EPSO test strongly tests the knowledge of the L2 chosen. 

What’s more is that Spanish is widely learned and in some countries is the second foreign language studied after English. Lastly, in the 2017 and 2018 procedures for the Graduate Administrators EPSO test (AD5, common level for University’s graduates), which granted the possibility to choose L2 from the top 5 languages in the EU, showed that Spanish and Italian were more widely used than German: 26% and 27% of usage, against Germany's 19%.

As the former EPSO procedure was also based on a system considering language skills of candidates, any combination of the three procedural languages would also have resulted in an unfair advantage for German and French-speaking communities. 

What now?

The proposal of using a constructed international auxiliary language, i.e. Esperanto, has also been considered. This language was created two centuries ago as a mix of European languages’ grammars and vocabularies. However, aside from ensuring that everyone would have to learn the language from the basics, adopting Esperanto as a solution would still require the costs for national translations and would not be useful in international relations outside of the Union.

Italy and Spain will therefore continue to emphasise the importance and the usage of their own languages at a more institutional level. On the other side, of course the costs of a perfect multilingual institutional system would be prohibitive. The EPSO procedure will change in the next few months to ensure better competitiveness, but in certain fields, as for example the Bluebook Traineeship, English, French and German still remain the required foreign languages.