Tag: working language

Despite the continued dominance of English as a working language, demand for French classes in Brussels has increased, notably among EU staff and accredited diplomats and journalists, says Thierry Lagnau, director of the 'Alliance Française Bruxelles-Europe'.

The EU institutions have launched a campaign ahead of this weekend's European Languages Day aimed at encouraging young French speakers to consider a career in interpreting, as the European Commission moves to address the "serious shortage" of French interpreters it expects to hit its services in the next five to 10 years.

There is still room for improvement regarding the number of documents translated into German by the European institutions, despite recent growth in the number of German EU officials using their native language professionally, Margareta Hauschild, director of the Goethe-Institut Belgien in Brussels, told EurActiv in an interview.

The European Parliament has called on the European Council to boost the use of German and other languages on its websites, including those of EU presidencies.

No additional funding will be released to boost EU language policy until 2013 at the earliest, said the commissioner responsible for the dossier Leonard Orban yesterday (18 September 2008), unveiling the EU executive's new multilingualism strategy.

"French and German are unlikely to survive in Brussels" unless both countries "unite to better assert the importance of their languages," argues Marc Foglia, the chief editor of the Groupe des Belles Feuilles, a reflection group, in a post on Blogactiv.

Representatives of the academic community gave their backing to the idea of a 'personal adoptive' language at a public hearing on multilingualism yesterday (15 April), with some suggesting EU funding be made available for the proposal.

The multilingualism portfolio is too important to be sacrificed by the next European Commission, Multilingualism Commissioner Leonard Orban said in an interview with EurActiv Romania. As proof of this, Turkish could become the next official EU language provided that Cyprus concludes reunification talks, he indicated.

Defending the multiplicity of languages in the EU is the best way of protecting them as taking a single language too seriously will only succeed in killing it, argues Catherine Suard of the French Institute in Sofia in an interview with EurActiv Bulgaria. 

Promoting a multilingual economy, giving citizens access to European Union information in their own languages and encouraging linguistic diversity through language learning: these are the principles underpinning the Commission's multilingualism policy.

More needs to be done to promote language learning outside of formal educational settings if breakthroughs are to be made in spreading language use across the EU, Commissioner Leonard Orban will say today, presenting the conclusions of a report on multilingualism.

Multilingualism Commissioner Leonard Orban chaired the first meeting of a group of intellectuals and experts to make recommendations on how languages can foster "intercultural dialogue and mutual understanding", ahead of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008.

European Ombudsman Nikiforos Diamandouros has officially criticised the EU institutions' recruitment office, EPSO, for 'maladministration' following a Polish complaint concerning English-, French- and German-language bias in EU entrance exams between 2004-06, to the detriment of the ten countries which joined the EU in 2004.   

The Council of Europe issued its second report on the situation of minority languages in the United Kingdom on 15 March 2007, which says more effort should be made in favour of Irish, Welsh and Scots/Ulster Scots/Scottish Gaelic. 

A high-level campaign group aims to have French confirmed as the EU's primary legal language.