Use of English in EU business and documents

Die Anfrage war erfolgreich.

Dear European Parliament,

Under the right of access to documents in the EU treaties, as developed in Regulation 1049/2001, I am requesting documents which contain the following information:

-- The obligation to use the English language in all documents.
-- Procedures to ensure true and accurate translation of EU business and documents into the English language.

Yours faithfully,

Clive Stanley

AccesDocs, Europäisches Parlament

Our ref.: A(2017)5638

 

Dear Mr Stanley,

 

The European Parliament acknowledges receipt of your request under
Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001.

 

You will receive a reply within 15 working days.

 

Best regards,

 

TRANSPARENCY – ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS

PRES | Directorate General for the Presidency

Directorate for Interinstitutional Affairs and Legislative Coordination

 

Public Register Webpage: [1]http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegistreWeb/

Accesdocs(at)ep.europa.eu

 

References

Visible links
1. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegistreWeb/

AccesDocs, Europäisches Parlament

Our ref.: A(2017)5638

 

Dear Mr Stanley,

 

In reply to your request for information on the "obligation to use the
English language in all documents" and "procedures to ensure true and
accurate translation of EU business and documents into the English
language" Parliament would like to point to the fact that according to
Article 4 of the European Community's very first Regulation (Regulation No
1 determining the languages to be used by the European Economic Community,
first published on 6 October 1958 and regularly updated with each
enlargement of the European Union:
[1]http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexU...)
"Regulations and other documents of general application shall be drafted
in the official languages."

 

The total number of official languages is 24, including English. The
others are: Bulgarian, Czech, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish,
French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Irish, Latvian, Lithuanian,
Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish and
Swedish. It is very probable that English will remain an official language
of the European Union after the United Kingdom will have left the EU, as
it is an official language in Ireland and Malta and any change to the EU
Institutions'  language regime is subject to a unanimous vote of the
Council according to Article 342 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the
European Union.

 

Each of the European Union's institutions has established means and
procedures to allow for true and accurate translations. You will find some
publications on the topic on the European Commission's website:
[2]https://ec.europa.eu/info/publications/t...

 

European Parliament provides more information on its procedures on a page
about multilingualism:
[3]http://www.europarl.europa.eu/aboutparli....
There you will also find more information on the translation of
legislative acts. Parliament's Directorate-General for Translation
([4]http://www.europarl.europa.eu/the-secret...)
ensures that Parliament's documents are available in all the official
languages of the European Union, thus enabling Parliament to meet its
commitment to the policy of multilingualism. Parliament has adopted a Code
of Conduct on Multilingualism
([5]http://www.europarl.europa.eu/pdf/multil...).
Parliament employs about 700 translators, who translate more than 100,000
pages each month. Moreover, Parliament's team of 75 lawyer-linguists
ensures, throughout the legislative procedure, the highest possible
quality of legislative texts in all EU languages.

 

Parliament's Research Services have recently published a briefing on
"Legal aspects of EU multilingualism" (January 2017)
([6]http://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/...
) that might be useful for your request as well.

 

Parliament considers your request as handled and the file as closed.
Please do not hesitate to come back to us, should you have any further
request for specific Parliament documents.

 

Sincere regards

 

TRANSPARENCY UNIT

European Parliament

Directorate-General for the Presidency

Accesdocs(at)ep.europa.eu

 

 

 

References

Visible links
1. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexU...
2. https://ec.europa.eu/info/publications/t...
3. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/aboutparli...
4. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/the-secret...
5. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/pdf/multil...
6. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/...