While the European Union is expanding and integrating at a rapid pace, more languages are becoming official languages of the EU. This diversity of languages makes an effective language policy a necessity. However, apart from all these national languages, there are even more regional and minority languages in Europe. Furthermore, with the increasing global dominance of the English language, a controversial debate has erupted on whether to use English as the main official language of the European Union. This article deals with the Implications of the European language policy, the European policy towards regional and minority languages, and the future of language policy in Europe.
Languages of Europe
The European Union itself focuses on the official languages of its member states. All of the 24 first official languages of the EU member states are working languages of the EU. While the EU funds projects to preserve regional and minority languages, it regards the Charter for Regional or Minority Languages as the main basis for the preservation of these languages within Europe. The EU, however, does support multilingualism within Europe by means of the Erasmus program. One of the purposes of Erasmus is to stimulate students into learning other languages. These languages courses, however, are not a compulsory part of the Erasmus program and therefore many students choose to not learn these languages as they can often follow their courses in languages such as English, French or German. A compulsory language course however, might deter people from choosing to study abroad. A possible solution could therefore be to increase the Erasmus grant for people who decide to follow these language courses. However, while this might stimulate the learning of the national languages of other member states, it generally does not apply to regional or minority languages.
The European language policy on regional and minority languages is based on the Charter for Regional or Minority languages. It was adopted in 1992 by the Council of Europe and is aimed at preserving regional and minority languages in Europe. While several larger member states of the Council of Europe like France, Italy and Russia which signed the treaty have not ratified it, the majority of European states have. While the charter certaintly helps in promoting and preserving endangered languages, it also has a weakness. It only applies to languages that are not the official language of the state. As a result, Irish, while being an endangered language itself, did not fully benefit from the treaty as it is an official language of Ireland. However, the charter was applied to Irish in the United Kingdom together with other languages such as Welsh and Scottish as they are only the official languages of subnational entities. For the same reason, languages such as Catalan and Galician fall within the charter. This is a serious shortcoming of the charter, as languages like Irish, Welsh, Luxemburgish are national languages, but are still endangered. Another shortcoming is the lack of a legal retribution. While it is a legally binding treaty that has been signed by many states, there is no governming or legal entity that can safeguard the execution of the charter and possibly fine a member state if it does not properly execute it. The main responsibility, therefore, lies with the member states.
While analyzing the language policy of the European Union, it is important to realize that the different European institutions all have different approaches to the use of language within the institution. The most multilingual institution of the European Union are the European Parliament. An MP can address the European Parliament in any of the official languages of the EU. Other institutions, however, such as the Commission and the Court of Auditors only use English, French and German. There are also institutions which mainly use one language for internal communication, with the European Central Bank and the European Court of Justice using mostly English and French respectively for internal communication. As such, the language use in most of the European institutions is discriminatory in itself for the purpose of efficiency, ignoring the national languages of other member states. Therefore one could assume that using English as the sole working language of the EU would be a minor shift.
While institutions such as the Commission and the Court of Auditors could switch to English as their sole working language, this is much more difficult for the Court of Justice. Since the Court was established in 1952, the official working language has been French. Due to the legal effect of previous judgements, it is difficult to switch to another languages due to interpretation difficulties between different languages. It is therefore unrealistic to assume the court will change its official working language to English.
Another issue is the inability of a large amount of European citizens, esppecially in the Southern and Eastern parts of Europe, to speak English. Many of these countries have only recently started stimulating its citizens to learn English. As a result, the older generations generally only speaks the national language. Therefore, it could take a few generations before these countries catch up with the rest of Europe in terms of English language proficiency. Any drastic decision on adopting English as the sole official working language of the European Union can therefore likely not be taken in the near future.
While major steps have been taken in increasing multilingualism as well as preserving the various regional and minority language in Europe, this is a long-term process which will have better results as time goes on. While aiding in the preservation of endangered language, the Charter for Regional or Minority languages will probably not be able to prevent several minority languages from becoming extinct. The increasing globalization of the world will furthermore lead to an increase in the use of English. While adopting English as the sole official working language of the European Union would have a positive effect on the efficiency within the different European organizations, I believe it is unlikely this will ever happen. Apart from having a discriminatory effects towards non English speakers, countries such as France and Germany will probably try to prevent a decline in the global status and use of their national language. The language debate will therefore probably continue in the future.
Meest gesproken talen in de Europese Unie. Bron: European Tribune (2008): 
