Cactus Language Blog

The Language of the EU

Posted by Sarah under English, French, German, In the Press, Italian

Augusta Nicol, Director of Studies at Cactus New York, comments on Berlusconi’s latest upset

Silvio Berlusconi, the intractable and obstinate Italian Prime Minister, has thrown a tantrum over the fact that EU meetings use the languages that most Europeans speak, and not Italian (read full article in EUobserver here).

He has “advised his ministers to walk out of EU meetings in which they are forced to speak another language, and boycott those for which there is no documentation available in Italian.”

Berlusconi is anti our using a group of 3 languages as ‘working languages’ in a multi-lingual but by no means omni-lingual group of people. This group consists of 27 different nations and 23 official languages, of them 13% English speaking; 14% French speaking; 18% German speaking members, which is almost half the EU population. While it would be great for all the EU politicians and bureaucrats to be fluent in all these languages, it’s far more likely that most can speak at least one of the above 3. Learning any language is a useful skill, especially in this political environment, but it makes sense to focus on a set of core languages which include many, not few.

Tags:Berlusconi, EU, Italian