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Managing multilingualism in the European Union: language policy evaluation for the European Parliament

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Abstract

One of the important issues raised by the European integration is that of languages and in particular how the EU institutions can cope with language diversity. In this paper, I develop an analysis aimed at assessing the quality of language regimes not in absolute terms, but rather in terms of their consistency with the actors’ goals, which define what we call a ‘scenario’. The paper focuses on the European Parliament as it was confronted with the challenges of enlargement. It compares the economic and political advantages and drawbacks of six language regimes under three different scenarios. Results show that various language regimes can be optimal depending on the scenario considered and that multilingualism does not imply inevitably an unsustainable increase in expenditures.

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Abbreviations

Coreper:

Committee of Permanent Representative of Member States

ECB:

European Central Bank

EP:

European Parliament

EU:

European Union

EU-15:

EU with 15 Member States

EU-25:

EU with 25 Member States

GDP:

Gross Domestic Product

MEP:

Member of the European Parliament

OJ:

Official Journal of the European Union

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Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank François Grin, Carlo Altomonte and four anonymous referees for their very helpful comments and suggestions. Any errors and all interpretations are all my own.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Translation and Interpretation, University of Geneva, 40, Bd du pont-d’Arve, Ch-1211, Geneva, Switzerland

    Michele Gazzola

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  1. Michele Gazzola
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Correspondence to Michele Gazzola.

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Gazzola, M. Managing multilingualism in the European Union: language policy evaluation for the European Parliament. Lang Policy 5, 395–419 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-006-9032-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-006-9032-5

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