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European language policy
Institutional frame for the European language policy was created due to the establishment of
supranational institutions, such as European Council (1949) and European Community (1957). The two
top organizations, with their numerous corpuses and foundation acts were initially meant to be agents of
political and economic integration of Europe. However, later on, it appeared that the initially designed
economic and partly political integration of European countries wasnt possible without more distinct
inclusion of the previously neglected socio-cultural components. This, however, highlighted one burning
question the problem of language.
The dilemmas posed because of this represent yet another example of conflict between globalization
and preservation of existing differences. The view which was readily accepted is that each member state
brings unique cultural treasures to the European partnership, and they are by far incarnated through
their language legacy, so they must be preserved as the greatest wealth of Europe, instead of being
merged for the purpose of faster integration. Insistence on this became the ideological mark of the
universal European language policy, dedicated to the tolerance, cooperation and suppression of
discrimination. The main fields of dealing with the questions of language policy can be separated into
three sections: 1. Language education for the citizens of Europe; 2. Status and the use of language in
European institutions; 3. Protection of the languages of minorities
Language education is obviously a domain of great importance for preservation of language diversity and
improvement of societal and individual multilingualism. European Union was strict in giving a strong
recommendation that the students of member states should be enabled to learn a number of languages,
with the main goal being that each citizen of the Union knows, and to some extent is able to use two
Union languages in addition to their own language.

What is yet to be seen is how the official Europe practices what it preaches, i.e. how it will regard
diversity of languages within its own house. It is widely known that international organizations cannot
work if they do not choose one language as a means for official communication between its member
states. Thus, United States allow six languages in their dealings, OSCE, NATO and European Council
usually allow only English and French, and European Free Trade Association allows only English.
However, despite this practice, as the first in history and thus far the only such organization, European
Union has maintained the viewpoint that the complete equality of therein assembled states, small ones
as well as the big ones, must guarantee that all national languages of its member states will
automatically receive the status of official and working languages of the Union, as well. Looking at the
gradual rise in the number of languages, it is easy to calculate that with 23 languages of European Union,
this makes 506 translation pairs (23x22).
European Union already has the largest translation service in the world, which currently costs 1 per cent
of its total budget, but around 40 per cent of its administrative budget; these percents could rise
significantly in the foreseeable future.