The official languages of the European Union and the official languages of the Member States

The 24 official languages of the European Union listed in Regulation No 1/58 and the official languages of the Member States are not necessarily identical. Some of those languages, such as Luxembourgish (the official language in Luxembourg, along with German and French), are not official languages of the European Union.

Before joining the European Union, each future Member State specifies the language it wishes to use as an official language within the Union. Therefore, the list of official languages evolves. Languages are added when new Member States join and may be removed in the event of a withdrawal from the European Union. The withdrawal clause has only been used once to date, by the United Kingdom, whose official language within the EU was English. However, English has not been removed from the list of official languages of the European Union, as it is an official language at national level in two Member States (Ireland and Malta) and is also frequently used as a lingua franca in the EU institutions and in international trade: a unanimous Member State vote within the Council of the European Union required for such a removal has not been contemplated.

Each of the European Union’s official languages is assigned an ISO (International Organization for Standardization) code, which is used, in particular, to identify the different language versions of the same document:

See also

> Multilingualism – Book Volume 1