Language regimes in the EU

The earliest steps towards European integration date back to 1951, when six European countries (Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands

and (West) Germany) signed the Treaty of Paris and established the Euro-pean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) as a means of preventing arms race in the aftermath of the Second World War. The Treaty was drafted in French and contains no reference to languages. Article 100 states that the Treaty is drafted in a single authentic copy and that certified copies will be delivered to each member states.⁶ Although there was a general perception that French had a privileged status as the only official language of the ECSC (Hnízdo, 2005), the language issue was officially addressed one year later by the com-mittee of the foreign ministers during a meeting held in Paris in July 1952 (European Commission, 2009). The committee established a full multilin-gualism regime based on four official and working languages (Dutch, French, German and Italian).⁷ The debate mainly revolved around two ideas. On the one side, the French delegation supported the idea that having every docu-ment drafted in one language was the only way to grant legal consistency with the Treaty. On the other side, the German delegation insisted that pri-ority should be given to respecting the rights of the recipients of the law and that this would only be possible if the legal texts were equally binding in all official languages. The latter view eventually prevailed and, in a protocol issued on July 24, 1952, the committee of foreign ministers established the principles at the basis of the language regime of the ECSC (and, as a matter of fact, of the institutions in which it evolved):

1. decisions, recommendations and individual opinions of the Commu-nity must be drafted in the language of the recipients;

2. correspondence with the Community institutions takes place in one of the four official languages and replies must be written in the language of the sender;

3. the Assembly may determine autonomously the practices of language use for the purposes of its own functioning;

6Article 100 of the Treaty establishes that "[l]e présent Traité, rédigé en un seul exemplaire, sera déposé dans les archives du gouvernement de la République française qui en remettra une copie certifiée conforme à chacun des gouvernements des autres États signataires." (Of-ficial English translation: "This Treaty, drawn up in a single original, shall be deposited in the archives of the Government of the French Republic, which shall transmit a certified copy thereof to each of the Governments of the other signatory States.") (Traité instituant la Com-munauté Européenne du Charbon et de l’Acier,1951).

7The distinction between "official" and "working" languages echoes practices adopted by other international organizations. The International Criminal Court, for example, has six of-ficial languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish), of which only En-glish and French are also working languages for everyday activities (see https://www.icc-cpi.int/about). In the case of the ECSC this distinction becomes meaningless, as its language regime puts all official languages on the same level.

4. legislative acts must be published in all four official languages;

5. the Court of Justice can define its own regime and determines autonomously the language of the draft judgement;

6. member states with more than one official language can request that the rules provided for by their legislation be applied (European Com-mission,2009).

This view quickly became a standard approach to the language issue. Indeed, both Treaties of Rome of 1957 (establishing the European Economic Com-munity and the European Atomic Energy ComCom-munity) read (in the French version):

“Le présent Traité, rédigé en un exemplaire unique, en langue allemande, en langue française, en langue italienne et en langue néerlandaise,les quatre textes faisant également foi, sera déposé dans les archives du Gouvernement de la République Italienne qui remet-tra une copie certifiée conforme à chacun des gouvernements des autres États signataires” (emphasis added)⁸ (Traité instituant la Communauté Économique Européenne, 1957; Traité instituant la Communauté Européenne de l’Énergie Atomique,1957)

This represents a clear change of direction with respect to the Treaty of Paris, as the equal treatment of languages had eventually received legal recogni-tion.

The legal basis of the current multilingual regime of the EU is Regula-tion No. 1 adopted by the Council on 15 April 1958. The RegulaRegula-tion lists rules identical to those applied by the ECSC. In its original version, it offi-cially provides that “[t]he official languages and the working languages of the institutions of the Community shall be Dutch, French, German and Ital-ian” (Council of the European Economic Community,1958) and it has been amended with every enlargement to include new languages. From a legal standpoint, this means that all texts are drafted in all official languages, they are not mere translations of an original version and are all equally binding.⁹

8"The present Treaty, drawn up in a single original in the German, French, Italian and Netherlands languages, all four texts being equally authentic, shall be deposited in the archives of the Government of the Italian Republic which shall transmit a certified copy to each of the Governments of the other signatory States."

9In this regard, it is worth noting that Articles 3 and 4 of the Regulation distinguish be-tween documents to be sent to a specific member state or individual falling under the ju-risdiction of a member state, which shall be drafted in the official language of the member state, and documents of general application, which shall be drafted in all official languages.

It is worth noting here that there exists a difference between theexternaland theinternallanguage regime. Most of the preceding considerations apply to the external language regime, which covers all exchanges between the in-stitutions and the outside. On the contrary, the internal language regime governs the exchanges within and between the institutions of the Commu-nity. Regulation 1/1958 allows for a great deal of flexibility within institu-tions by providing that “[t]he instituinstitu-tions of the Community may stipulate in their rules of procedure which of the languages are to be used in specific cases” (Council of the European Economic Community,1958, art. 6). It was observed that French, German and, starting from the 80s, English quickly be-came the languages of everyday use within the institutions (European Com-mission, 2009). Some even go as far as to argue that French was the only official language of the European Economic Community up until 1973, when the UK and the Republic of Ireland joined the Community (Šlosarˇcík,2002;

Hnízdo, 2005). The European Commission explicitly lists English, French and German as its "procedural" languages for internal business.¹⁰

At the time that I started developing the model, the European Union had 28 member states and 24 official and working languages (OWLs).¹¹ How-ever, for a more complete representation of the linguistic landscape of the European Union, a number of regional and minority languages and dialects would need to be mentioned in addition to the list of official languages. For example, although Scottish Gaelic enjoys equal status (or, in the words of the Gaelic Language Act, equalrespect) as the English language in Scotland,¹²it is not one of the official languages of the EU. Although by "regional and minor-ity languages" one usually refers to languages traditionally spoken on the Eu-ropean territory, we should not disregard the weight of non-autochthonous language communities that resulted from migration flows. Some of these languages even have local recognition in some member states. It is the case, for example, of Vietnamese, which is an officially recognized minority lan-guage in the Czech Republic. Other immigrant lanlan-guages do not have offi-cial recognition in any EU member states but are still spoken by a sizeable share of people as a native language, such as (different varieties of) Arabic in France (Talon,2012).

10Seehttp://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-13-825_en.htm.

11Since February 1^st, the number of member states went down to 27, but the number of official languages is still 24. For the purposes of the model presented here, the United King-dom is still taken into consideration.

12For the full text of the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005, see http://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2005/7.