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The languages of the European Union are languages used by people within the member states of the European Union. They include the twenty official languages of the European Union (with Bulgarian, Irish and Romanian due to gain this status on 1 January 2007) along with a range of others. The EU asserts on its EUROPA homepage: "Languages: Europe's asset" and devotes a specialised subsite, the EUROPA Languages portal, to the subject. EU policy is to encourage all its citizens to be multilingual; specifically, it encourages them to be able to speak two languages in addition to their mother tongue. A number of EU funding programmes actively promote language learning and linguistic diversity, but the EU has very limited influence in this area as the content of educational systems remains the responsibility of individual Member States. * Official languages of the European Union
Language skills of European citizens The following tables are based on "Special Eurobarometer 243" of the European Commission with the title "Europeans and their Languages" (summary full text), published on February 2006 with research carried out on November and December 2005. This is a poll, not a census. 28,694 citizens with a minimum age of 15 were asked in the 25 member-states as well as in the future member-states (Bulgaria, Romania) and the candidate countries (Croatia, Turkey) at the time of the survey. Only citizens, not immigrants, were asked. The first table shows what proportion of citizens said that they could have a conversation in each language as their mother tongue and as a second language or foreign language (only the languages with at least 2% of the speakers are listed): Source: * German is, then, the most widely spoken mother tongue with 18% of the speakers, while English is the most widely spoken language in the EU with 51%. One should also note that 100% of the Hungarians, 100% of the Portuguese, and 99% of the Greeks speak the state language as their mother tongue. The knowledge of foreign languages varies considerably in the specific countries, as the table below shows. The three most spoken second or foreign languages in the EU are English, German and French. When no rate is noted, the language is not one of the three most spoken second or foreign languages in this country. Source: * 56% of citizens in the EU Member States are able to hold a conversation in one language apart from their mother tongue. This is 9 points more than was perceived in 2001 among the 15 Member States at the time *. 28% of the respondents state that they speak two foreign languages well enough to have a conversation. Still, almost half of the respondents, 44%, admit not knowing any other language than their mother tongue. Approximately 1 in 5 Europeans can be described as an active language learner, i.e. someone who has recently improved his/her language skills or intends to do so over the following 12 months. English remains the most widely spoken foreign language throughout Europe. 38% of EU citizens state that they have sufficient skills in English to have a conversation (apart from the citizens of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, the two English-speaking countries). 14% of Europeans indicate that they know either French or German along with their mother tongue. In 19 out of 29 countries polled, English is the most widely known language apart from the mother tongue, this being particularly the case in Sweden (89%), Malta (an ex-British colony) (88%) and the Netherlands (87%), while German and French is so in three countries. Moreover, the citizens of the EU think they speak English at a better level than any other second or foreign language. 77% of EU citizens believe that children should learn English and Englsh is considered number one language to learn in all countries where the research conducted but the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and Luxembourg. All in all, English either as a mother tongue or as a second/foreign language is spoken by 51% of EU citizens, followed by German with 32% and French with 28% of those asked. With the enlargement of the European Union, the balance between French and German is slowly changing. Clearly more citizens in the new Member States master German (23% compared with 12% in the EU15) while their skills in French and Spanish are scarce (3% and 1% respectively compared with 16% and 7% among the EU15 group). It is worth pointing out that language skills are unevenly distributed both over the geographical area of Europe and over sociodemographic groups. Reasonably good language competences are perceived in relatively small Member States with several state languages, lesser used native languages or "language exchange” with neighbouring countries. This is the case for example in Luxembourg where 92% speak at least two languages. Those who live in Southern European countries or countries where one of the major European languages is a state language appear to have moderate language skills. Only 5% of Turkish, 13% of Irish and 16% Italians master at least two languages apart from their mother tongue. A "multilingual" European is likely to be young, well-educated or still studying, born in a country other than the country of residence, who uses foreign languages for professional reasons and is motivated to learn. Consequently, it seems that a large part of European society is not enjoying the advantages of multilingualism. Free language lessons (26%), flexible language courses that suit one’s schedule (18%) and opportunities to learn languages in a country where it is spoken natively (17%) are considered to be the main incentives encouraging language learning. Group lessons with a teacher (20%), language lessons at school (18%), “one-to-one” lessons with a teacher and long or frequent visits to a country where the language is spoken are considered to be the most suitable ways to learn languages. Status of other languages There has been a suggestion in an official briefing that the implicit principle for official languages of the European Union is that each member state can put forward at most one official language ('one member state, one language'). This has not been confirmed in documents. The Spanish and Irish governments have sought the status of 'official' EU languages for Basque, Catalan-Valencian, Galician, and Irish. The 2667th Council Meeting of the Council of the European Union in Luxembourg on 13 June 2005 decided to authorise limited use at EU level of languages recognised by Member States other than the official working languages. Besides making Irish the 21st official language, the council also granted recognition to "languages other than the languages referred to in Council Regulation No 1/1958 whose status is recognised by the Constitution of a Member State on all or part of its territory or the use of which as a national language is authorised by law." The official use of such languages will be authorised on the basis of an administrative arrangement concluded between the Council and the requesting Member State. * Turkish as well as Greek is an official language of the Republic of Cyprus, but was not adopted. Irish Although the Irish language had not been one of the official languages of the European Union prior to 13 June 2005, it is the Republic of Ireland's first official language, and has minority-language status in Northern Ireland. Since the Republic of Ireland's accession to the European Economic Community (now the European Union) in 1973, EU treaties have been published and authenticated in Irish - as an official treaty language - as well as the EU official languages, and one has been able to make written submissions to Union institutions in Irish. On 13 June 2005, following a unanimous decision by EU foreign ministers, it was announced that Irish will be made the 21st official language of the EU but a derogation stipulates that not all documents have to be translated into Irish as is the case with the other official languages. * The decision means that legislation approved by both the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers will now be translated into Irish, and interpretation from Irish will be available at European Parliament plenary sessions and some Council meetings. The new arrangements will come into effect on 1 January, 2007. The cost of translation, interpretation, publication and legal services involved in making Irish an official EU language is estimated at just under €3.5 million a year.* The derogation will be reviewed in four years and every five years thereafter. Irish will be the first official language of the Union that is not the most widely spoken language in any member state - 2002 census figures show that in the Republic of Ireland there are 1,670,894 speakers of Irish out of a population of 3,750,995, and only 439,541 use Irish every day. There are small but slowly growing diaspora communities that speak Irish around the world, the largest being in the United States, with 25,000 Irish speakers. * Catalan-Valencian, Galician, and Basque Although Catalan-Valencian, Galician and Basque are not nation-wide official languages in Spain, as co-official languages in the respective regions they are eligible to benefit from official use in EU institutions under the terms of the 13 June 2005 resolution of the Council of the European Union. The Spanish government has assented to the provisions in respect of these languages. The status of Catalan, spoken by many millions of citizens, has been the subject of particular debate. On 11 December 1990, the use of Catalan was the subject of a European Parliament Resolution (resolution A3-169/90 on languages in the (European) Community and the situation of Catalan (OJ-C19, 28 January 1991). On 2005-11-16, Committee of the Regions President Peter Straub signed an agreement with the Spanish Ambassador to the EU, Carlos Sagües Bastarreche, approving the use of Spanish regional languages in an EU institution for the first time in a meeting on that day, with interpretation provided by European Commission interpreters. * * On 2006-07-03, the European Parliament’s Bureau approved a proposal by the Spanish State to allow citizens to address the Euro chamber in Basque, Catalan and Galician, two month after its initial rejection. * * Welsh and Scottish Gaelic In response to a written parliamentary question tabled following the 2005-06-13 resolution on official use of regional languages, the UK Minister for Europe, Douglas Alexander, stated on 2005-06-29 that "The Government have no current plans to make similar provisions for UK languages." Russian Though not an official language of the European Union, Russian is widely spoken in some of the newer member states of the Union that were formerly in the Eastern bloc. Russian is the native language of about 1.5 million Slavs residing in the Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania. It is the dominant spoken language in Riga, Rezekne, Daugavpils, Narva and other cities in the region, also spoken and understood by ethnic Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians, and people of mixed heritage. Although rarely a native language, Russian is widely understood by many in Bulgaria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, some in Germany, Hungary, Romania and other nations. It is the 6th most spoken language in the EU. About 10% of all EU citizens speak or understand Russian to some extent. National Sign Languages in the EU Roughly one person in one thousand uses a national sign language as a first language, however there are many more that use one as their second language. An increasing number of countries have some form of recognition of their national sign language such as Belgium with Flemish Sign Language (VGT) and Belgian-French Sign Language (LSFB), the United Kingdom with British Sign Language (BSL). In Northern Ireland, Irish Sign Language (ISL) and Northern Ireland Sign Language (NISL) are recognised as official languages. On 1988-06-17, the European Parliament unanimously approved a Resolution about national Sign Languages. This resolution asks all Member States for recognition of their national sign languages as official languages which would bring better linguistic rights and protection for sign language users especially the deaf users of sign language. Further languages of the European Union Besides the languages of Ireland, Spain and the UK (see above), there are other regional languages spoken within the EU that do not have official recognition at EU level (although they may have some official status within the member state). Some of these count many more speakers than some of the lesser-used official languages. These include: The Katharevousa variant of Greek is no longer official. Although not an EU treaty, some EU member states have ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Its ratification is also a prerequisite for new member-states joinig the Union. Provision in the proposed constitutional treaty The Treaty establishing a European constitution is drafted in the 21 official languages, and the languages of three candidate countries: Romanian, Bulgarian, and Turkish. It contains the following provision: Article IV-448(2): This Treaty may also be translated into any other languages as determined by Member States among those which, in accordance with their constitutional order, enjoy official status in all or part of their territory. A certified copy of such translations shall be provided by the Member States concerned to be deposited in the archives of the Council. NB: The Constitution has been signed by all Member States and is in the ratification process. Due to its rejection in France and the Netherlands, it is uncertain whether it will ever come into force. See also | |||||||||
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