An internal document seen by EurActiv shows that 11 out of the 26 spokespersons that have already been designated to the incoming European Commission are Anglophone. Of these, seven are British and four are Irish (EurActiv 21/01/10).
Widespread rumours confirm that even the 27th spokesperson, to be appointed by Romanian Commissioner Dacian Cioloş, is expected to be English.
Commission officials concede that even the current list is the product of a major review carried out since the original spokespersons' team proposed by the commissioners-desginate included around 20 Anglophone spokespersons.
Appointments are still ongoing and fresh reviews are possible, explained an EU official. "The new spokespersons' service is not in place yet," said the head of Commission's spokespersons' service, Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen. "The nomination procedure is still ongoing and has to be finalised," she reiterated yesterday (21 January) in response to questions from journalists during the Commission's daily press briefing in Brussels.
An officer of the Spanish EU Presidency underlined that "it is important to maintain a proportion among different nationalities in the public services, including that of spokespersons".
'Cultural pluralism at risk'
"After the enlargement of 2004, we have seen a clear trend to privilege English-mother tongue officials in the press room, with the risk of preferring language criteria in the selection of spokespersons rather than competence or communication skills," said Lorenzo Consoli, president of the International Press Association (IPA/API).
"The linguistic predominance of English can have cultural and political impacts," he added, explaining that "cultural pluralism is at risk" if the trend is not reversed.
Moreover, the communication policy of the European Commission itself would be in danger, he argued, if it is carried out almost exclusively by English mother-tongue officials. He said they tend to use expressions taken from English literature or culture, which might not be understandable to the majority of non-English journalists.
"Paradoxically mother-tongue English spokespersons risk communicating less well in English than colleagues of other nationalities," Consoli said.
To guarantee this pluralism, API is in favour of a proportionate distribution of spokespersons' positions and defends the bilingual regime adopted in the press room, where journalists can ask questions in French and English.
However, despite these efforts, recent developments show that the EU institutions are going in the other direction. Aside from the disproportionate number of Anglophone spokespeople, there is in fact an increasing trend towards reducing multilingual press releases.
"Press releases of the new High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Catherine Ashton, are almost exclusively in English, and only rarely are they followed - with an unfair delay - by French translations," Consoli complained.
Sarkozy backing French
Last week, former French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, special envoy on francophony to President Nicolas Sarkozy, visited Brussels to push for a better linguistic balance in the EU institutions.
Paris would be "gentle but firm" in promoting francophony, Raffarin said. He explained that multilingualism has important geopolitical implications for Europe, with the alternative being a G2 between the USA and China. Francophony, says Raffarin, unites Europe and Africa and has a strategic role to play in this respect (EurActiv 18/01/09).
