The European Parliament and the European Union are primarily built upon the ideals of democracy. Can you recall what democracy implies?
Democracy is a governing system in which every citizen and his rights are equally catered to.
The European Parliament represents all the citizens of Europe, and hence the right to freedom of speech in one’s own language is of utmost importance.
The European Union of 27-member countries uses 24 official languages. The reason behind this relatively lesser number of languages is because a few member states share common languages.
The 24 official languages are Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, and Swedish.
The democratic approach upheld by the Parliament is highly reflected in each of its proceedings. The rules and laws issued by the Parliament are published in all 24 languages. Moreover, each member of the Parliament (MEP) has the liberty to exercise the language of his choice during the formal speaking sessions. The speech is then interpreted and translated into other official languages by professionally trained interpreters and translators.
In fact, one of the most important departments under the European Parliament is its translation department.
On the other hand, the European Commission uses English, French, and German as its working languages. This approach helps save a considerable amount of time and money by not translating all documents into all other languages.
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