Jean-Luc Melenchon has said English should not be the third working language of European institutions when the United Kingdom decides to leave.
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Dropping English from the European Union is of course an absurd proposition, despite a pronouncement from one French mayor that “English no longer has any legitimacy in Brussels”.
Each member state has the right to nominate one primary language, and although English is in everyday use in both Ireland and Malta, it is not registered as the official language by either country.
English is one of the EU’s three working languages. Ireland chose Gaelic. Malta picked Maltese.
Hubner said that although English was the “dominant language” used by the European Union civil servants and MEPs, in legal terms “if you do not have the United Kingdom, you do not have English”, “The Times” reported.
“We have a regulation where every EU country has the right to notify one official language”, Danuta Hubner, the Polish MEP or Member of European Parliament who heads the European Parliament’s constitutional affairs committee, told a press conference in Brussels yesterday.
French was the dominant language in the EU institutions until the 1990s, when the arrival of Sweden, Finland and Austria tilted the balance, amplified by central and east European countries that had adopted English as their second tongue.
However, the European Commission Representation in Ireland has described Ms Hubner’s claim this week as “incorrect”. The executive said that it is up to the Council of Ministers to vote unanimously on changes to the institutions’ language regime.
EU Digital Economy Commissioner Günther Oettinger also got involved, telling the Guardian that English was going nowhere.
Perhaps the miniature crisis will encourage MEPs and EU officials to brush up on their language skills: a 2013 report by the European Court of Auditors included several examples of the English language being butchered in EU documents.
However, it remains unlikely that English will fully be dropped from the EU.
Use of “foresee” – “The safest policy with this word is to avoid it”, the report says.
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Over 2,000 instances of “modality” being used to mean “procedure”.
