The European Union is an international organization of undoubtedly unique multilingual character. The official status granted to all 24 official national languages of its 28 MS is legally enshrined in EU Law and derives from both, the political necessity to democratically represent the multiplicity of languages of roughly half a billion citizens and the symbolic significance of diverse European historical, cultural and political traditions. This language regime is laudable and worthy of preservation if the EU is to maintain close ties to its citizens through public communication and deliberations in all 24 official languages (Athanassiou, 2006, p. 5). This is not, however, to close one’s eyes to the current challenges the EU is facing in the aftermath of the global economic and financial crisis and the rethinking this might entail for the working language regime deployed in the EU committee and delegation meetings.
Tag: language policy
Language planning and lots of it..
I am a European citizen and I also feel like one. On the other hand, I also feel Dutch. Should I then speak Dutch, French, German or English, or should I speak all of them. It is quite hard to make one rule out of it. Is the feeling where you belong connected to what language you have to speak or is language just something we learn and use?
I believe these are the underlying thoughts and questions when we come to the debate on t
he language policy of the European Union. The European Language Policy is vast and varying. Overall, the European languages are the supported by the European Language Policy. Multilingualism is in general seen as the only possible answer to the all the different languages that are spoken within the European Union.
This is of course not the only option. In the current situation in the European Union every national language is allowed. The delegates speak with each other in their own language while a translator translates. This has been the case for all the years in the past. What is however happening in every level of politics in the European Union, is that English is becoming a more used language. Documents are becoming mostly printed in English and delegates tend to use English in informal meetings. Outside of the supranational institution, European citizens are getting more used to speak English. This raised the overall question on what to do with languages within the European Union.
‘Band-aids don’t fix bullet holes’
We’re all guilty of living in bubbles, but we’re not all in influential supranational organisations that have ambitions to create a new global superpower.
This is the impression I get time and time again when reading documents produced by the Union and those closely linked to its goals and ambitions. Be it a Eurobarometer (386 is a goodie for you language fans), or a speech from a former Commissioner for Multilingualism. They all read the same…
European Language Policy? Let the people speak!
Is the European Language Policy offering an adequate answer?
Well, no. When does the European Union ever give an adequate answer? Generally speaking, from what I’ve assessed during these three years of European (Union) Studies, the EU rarely provides an appropriate solution. The complexity of their decision making system, their feeble enforcement system and their subsidiarity to Member States are some of the reasons why the EU has proven to be ineffective in its objectives. The Commission may have honourable and grand intentions, as can be read in the impressive and ambitious European Commission Communication (2008), but these are too far-reaching or abstract to be operationalized. This EC communication, for instance, expresses the necessity to value all languages and overcome language barriers in order to allow dialogue and social cohesion (2008); but provides no recommendation, measure or deadline for reaching such a utopian aspiration.
Continue reading European Language Policy? Let the people speak!
Laat man loopen!
Not just Europe, but the world as a whole has reached an unprecedented level of cross border communication, even connecting whole continents and people are becoming more mobile by the year. As a result, tourism has surged and the world’s population is becoming more mobile as a whole, with people not just travelling somewhere for a short period of time, but settling down for a couple of years, before moving to the next country. An example of which are students who, in recent years, start considering studying in countries other than their own more frequently.
All of this has propelled the need for a common language to serve as a means of communication, a role for which English appears to be the most prominent and promising contender at the moment. This is especially true for Europe.
Is the European language policy an adequate answer?
The European Union officially take a position that favors multilingualism within its borders. The current official position is summarized by the LETPP (Languages in Europe, theory, policy, practice). They identify five common threads of the EU language policy throughout the last 30 years:
Continue reading Is the European language policy an adequate answer?
The European Language Policy: adequate or not?
Over the course of this really great course, After Babel, we have studied a large variety of topics concerning multilingualism and its effects, languages and their link to culture and so on. Nearing the end of the course, we are focusing more on the issue of the language policy of the European Union and its various institutions. Here, in my final blog post, I will take a look at these policies and give an opinion on whether or not the current policy is adequate and if it will last into the future.
Continue reading The European Language Policy: adequate or not?
Languages in the EU institutions
From the creation of European Steel and Coal Community until now, the European integration has always been, by ideal a multilingual process. At the beginning the multilingual ideal was relatively realistic in practice as the number of members and official languages were relatively low. However, following the successive enlargement waves of 2004, 2007 and 2013, the number of Member States grew from 15 to 28. Consequently, the European Union (EU) has now 450 million habitants and a mosaic of language composed of 24 official languages. This diversity is truly unique and the EU embraces it. Nevertheless, having an efficient language policy including that number of languages can also represent a challenge. In this post, I will have a look at the European language policy and more specifically within the European institutions.
Suppress all languages!
Best practice?!
The best you can do for a language to flourish and stay alive is to suppress it. This is the surprising and not totally serious solution of our lecturer Charles van Leeuwen for the best practice language policy in the EU. There is no doubt that this approach works very well which can be seen in the Spanish case. During the Franco regime all languages apart from Spanish were forbidden. But this is surely not a possible solution for a general language policy in the EU. Continue reading Suppress all languages!
An Assessment of EU Language Policy
Multilingualism is in the genetic code of the Union.– Leonard Orban, former Commissioner for multilingualism
From the very beginning, multilingualism has been at the core of the European integration project. The European continent is characterized by huge linguistic diversity, and the importance of protecting this diversity has been recognized by the relevant European institutions from early onwards. However, given the complexities of the current age of globalisation and the rise of English as a lingua franca, European language policies face ever more difficulties.
In this blog entry, I want to focus especially on the European Union and how it applies multilingualism in its institutions. The principle of multilingualism is crucial for the EU setting and should be maintained as far as possible. However, restricting the use of languages at certain levels is reasonable and the benefits of English as a lingua franca should be explored.