Why multilingualism?

In practice, this means that the European Union must be able to understand and express itself in the 24 languages chosen as official languages of the European Union, because they are the official language or one of the official languages of one or more Member States. With the accession of new Member States, the number of official languages has risen from 4 (German, French, Italian and Dutch) to 24 today. By speaking all of these languages, the European Union can communicate with the citizens of all the Member States. Multilingualism is therefore a democratic requirement which guarantees the equality of languages and the accessibility of the European institutions for all citizens of the Union: thanks to the work of translators and interpreters in the EU institutions, European citizens can address those institutions in their own language, and the institutions can respond to them in that same language.

This imperative was the subject of the very first regulation adopted by the EEC, Regulation No 1/58 ‘determining the languages to be used by the European Economic Community’.

The European Union is a Union based on the rule of law, which must be equal for all and therefore produce legal effects that can be understood by everyone despite the abundance of languages and the diversity of legal systems. This means that, regardless of the language in which they are drafted, EU rules and case-law that have an impact on citizens’ daily lives must be understood in the same way in all the official languages and in all the national legal systems.

Pursuant to the Treaties, the Court of Justice of the European Union is responsible for ensuring respect for a common body of law, the interpretation and application of which are, by definition, multilingual. Multilingual proceedings are therefore an essential requirement in order to ensure the fairness of proceedings and to guarantee that European citizens have access to justice and to the case-law as a source of law. The Court is therefore organised in such a way as to enable it to carry out its work regardless of the language in which a case is brought before it. In this way, all European citizens are able to access the EU courts and consult the case-law in their own language.