Research Papers

One of the most striking features of the 27-EU is the use of 23 official languages. This feature derives from the fact that the EU historically has been formed by independent States, each one with its own cultural and legal identity. The rules concerning multilingualism and the use of language in the EU institutions are old and establish the principle of a “stark multilingualism”, in the sense that all the legal texts written in the 23 languages are official and have a legal value. However, more recently, some factors have come to undermine this basic assumption underlying the Treaties principles. They relate to reasons which are economic (eg. multilingualism is expensive) or political (countries contributing more to the EU budget are allowed to linguistic privileges) or relate to competitiveness (the role of the EU towards the world). As a matter of fact, it is possible to ascertain a move toward a more pragmatic approach by some EU administrations, which depart from the “old rules” of strong multilingualism in some key organizational areas, and embrace a policy of “weak multilingualism”. This is the case of the EPSO and its trilingual policy, as well as of the EPO (European Patent office), whose language policy pushed the States to establish a strengthened cooperation. This presentation aims to identify the principles at stake: on the one side, the protection of the linguistic and cultural differences and the principle of equality of each State, also in connection with the principles of the internal market; on the other side, the shift toward a more informal and efficient management in some areas of the EU. A special attention will be dedicated to the jurisprudence of the Court of the EU.