Only half of Europeans can speak a foreign language

Speaking on 10 March 2005 at a Luxembourg Presidency conference on plurilingualism in teaching in Europe, the EU's first ever Multilingualism Commissioner Ján Figel explained that the CLIL approach provides exposure to foreign languages without requiring extra time in the curriculum. He says that promoting language learning is fundamental for the economy because a multilingual workforce is more employable and mobile. He also says that active measures must be taken to avoid a 'language divide' between those who only know their mother tongue and those who know other languages as well.

In an interview with EurActiv in February 2005, Commissioner Figel said his top priority was to have an EU of 20 official languages running smoothly with full responsibility for legal clarity and legally binding texts. He placed emphasis on quality of communication so that it is clearly understood, noting that "sometimes, lots of ministers, many languages, lots on the agenda can lead to misunderstandings due to speedy, unclear, long contributions".

Britain is known to have a particular problem with former Europe Minister Denis MacShane the latest to express concern at the country's "monolingualism". He argues in the Sunday Express for a major recruitment of foreign teachers to make up for the lack of British language teachers and for language teaching to start in primarly schools where at least one language should be taught.

Claire Goyer is the administrator of 'Défense de la langue française', founder of the section 'DLF, Bruxelles-Europe, diversité linguistique' [Defence of the French Language, Brussels - Europe, linguistic diversity] says that "the dominance of English is a source of resentment for certain representatives from different EU countries. It is discriminatory and undermines the principle of equal opportunities for all. It is something that the Commission should try to rectify, hopefully by a vigorous stance, in the Commission's forthcoming Communication on multilingualism".

Michael Czik, spokesperson for the 'Forum for language rights and cultural diversity', described the Commission's conception of multilingualism to EurActiv as being "politically cautious, vague, conservative and ineffective as to the aim of changing the focus of language learning at school from certain dominant languages and on the need to communicated (without translators and interpreters) in one language. He criticises the Commission's 'mother tongue plus two foreign languages' concept as "not being totally logical" and says there is a need for a common language (not French or English because that is discriminatory) such as Esperanto.

Davyth Hicks, the editor-in-chief of Eurolang , a specialist niche news agency covering topics related to lesser-used languages, linguistic diversity and national minorities within the European Union, told the online multilingual policy portal EurActiv that some countries are still "stuck in the jacobin idea of 'one language, one state'".

In an article written for cafe babel, he says that "at the moment there is an unrefined approach, devised in 1958, where most documents are translated into all official languages. Fine for the original EU of 6, but not for one of 25 member states. For example, do we need to have all documentation applicable only to Malta translated into Danish and Hungarian?"

He goes on to argue that a clear-cut system of three or four working languages for everyday internal EU business and the other current EU languages as official languages would save money. The money saved could then be used to cover translation and interpreting costs for meetings in less widely used languages where based on participants' requirements.

Currently there are three working languages for Commission business (English, French and German).

According to the National Geographic News, "the total annual cost of EU multilingualism will soon rise from 875 million dollars U.S. (670 million euros) to 1.3 billion dollars U.S. (1 billion euros), according to the European Commission, the union's executive body". This refers to the interpreting and translation costs and not the EU subsidised language programmes.

"Via its crosslingual network of franchise portals, EurActiv itself is an example of localisation, a form of translation adapted to local needs, in 11 languages," says Publisher Christophe Leclercq. "Translation and adaptation of EU communication could be done better and more cheaply in the countries themselves, for example by reinforcing Commission representations."