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English will not be an official EU language after Brexit, says senior MEP


Batu69

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No other EU country has English as their official language and so it could lose its status.

20160627_EP-038881A_DHO_002-714x349.jpg

Danuta Hubner at a press conference on the outcome of the U.K.'s EU referendum

Danuta Hübner, the head of the European Parliament’s Constitutional Affairs Committee (AFCO), warned Monday that English will not be one of the European Union’s official languages after Britain leaves the EU.

 

English is one of the EU’s 24 official languages because the U.K. identified it as its own official language, Hübner said. But as soon as Britain completes the process to leave the EU, English could lose its status.

 

“We have a regulation … where every EU country has the right to notify one official language,” Hübner said. “The Irish have notified Gaelic, and the Maltese have notified Maltese, so you have only the U.K. notifying English.”

 

“If we don’t have the U.K., we don’t have English,” Hübner said.

English is one of the working languages in the European institutions, Hübner said, adding: “It’s actually the dominating language,” the one most frequently used by EU civil servants.

 

The regulation listing official languages of the EU would have to be changed unanimously by remaining countries if they want to keep English as an official language, Hübner said.

 

However, an EU source explained that the regulations governing official languages are themselves subject to more than one translation. The 1958 regulation regarding the official languages of the EU, which was originally written in French, does not say clearly whether a member country – Ireland or Malta for instance — can have more than one official language, an EU source said. Interpretations of the French wording tend to conclude that this might be possible, whereas the English version appears to rule this out.

 

When Ireland and Malta joined the EU, English was already an official language, which is why the two countries asked for Gaelic and Maltese to be added to the list.

“If a member state has more than one official language, the language to be used shall, at the request of such state, be governed by the general rules of its law,” the regulation says.

 

“The rules governing the languages of the EU institutions shall be determined by the Council, acting unanimously by means of a regulation,” a European Commission spokesperson said, adding the rules “have been amended several times to take account of the different enlargements.”

 

The Commission has already started using French and German more often in its external communications, as a symbolic move after Britain voted to leave the EU last Thursday, according to the Wall Street Journal.

 

Meanwhile, the president of the regional council of Tuscany, Eugenio Giani, called for Italian to become one of the official languages of the EU. “We have not defended … our language as we should have, both on the European continent and in the world,” Giani said following the British referendum result.

 

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Looks  Don Eugenio Giani is not well informed. Italian is already one of the 24 official languages of the EU.

FYI, the European Union currently has 24 official languages. These are:

  • Bulgarian
  • Croatian
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • English
  • Estonian
  • Finnish
  • French
  • German
  • Greek
  • Hungarian
  • Irish
  • Italian
  • Latvian
  • Lithuanian
  • Maltese
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Romanian
  • Slovak
  • Slovenian
  • Spanish
  • Swedish

 

My opinion weights less than nothing for the European Parliament’s Constitutional Affairs Committee but, you know, english is the common language for many multilingual Europeans, even if the UK might not be anymore part of the EU.Many European use English as second lenguage, probably mch more then the french or the german.. ah.. and MALTESE.(!!!)

 

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2 minutes ago, TheMountain said:

my native language Croatian

 

Same here, I'm Croatian too :lol:

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11 hours ago, TheMountain said:

It's nice to see my native language Croatian is one of the official languages. :)

Can't complain; I'm glad to see spanish and hungarian as official languages, both my "native" languages

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knowledge-Spammer

can i compain  no russian :(

good thing i understand more then russian

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3 hours ago, knowledge said:

can i compain  no russian :(

good thing i understand more then russian

Russia is not in the EU.... that would be why

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This sounds incredibly petty.  There isn't a country in Europe in which English is not spoken on a daily basis (yes, even France).

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Are we talking about English US, or English UK? Much more peoples are speaking English US, not English UK.

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English is the international language of science (because of its crude simplicity in the eyes of many who speak other languages :D ).

That's why it will not go away anywhere.

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TheMountain
14 minutes ago, Fallon said:

English is the international language of science (because of its crude simplicity in the eyes of many who speak other languages :D ).

That's why it will not go away anywhere.

 

English appears 'crude & simplistic' until you try to learn the language. :D

 

(It's good to see you again. :secret:)

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16 hours ago, luisam said:

the European Union currently has 24 official languages:

  • Bulgarian
  • Croatian
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • English
  • Estonian
  • Finnish
  • French
  • German
  • Greek
  • Hungarian
  • Irish
  • Italian
  • Latvian
  • Lithuanian
  • Maltese
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Romanian
  • Slovak
  • Slovenian
  • Spanish
  • Swedish

When one-by-one countries vote for going away from the E.U., things won't be the same...

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12 hours ago, dMog said:

Russia is not in the EU.... that would be why

Do not worry, everything will soon have be one of the great Russia, if the trend continues, as it has been in last some years.

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Giveaways of the Day - we have 1GB of free space, has been freely available already few days.
Non-English speaking users are preferred.
 

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Within ten years the EU will break up and there will be no official language.  Years ago, someone had a brilliant idea of reconstructing the Roman Empire.   I think Rome is starting to burn.

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SnakeMasteR

Suaheli or GTFO.



Looks  Don Eugenio Giani is not well informed. Italian is already one of the 24 official languages of the EU.
He didn't wrote the article, so you should blame those that did for that misinterpretation.

It's probably about working language, nothing else.

"To save time and money, all the preparatory documents are usually not translated into all the languages. The European Commission uses English, French and German as its working languages. In the European Parliament, documents are translated into other languages according to the needs of the MEPs."
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46 minutes ago, Kalju said:

Giveaways of the Day - we have 1GB of free space, has been freely available already few days.
Non-English speaking users are preferred.

Coupon Code: BREXIT tIJWwj2.gif?1

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11 hours ago, Fallon said:

English is the international language of science (because of its crude simplicity in the eyes of many who speak other languages :D ).

That's why it will not go away anywhere.

 

you mean the science of the last 400 years? :D

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TheMountain

English & French is the official languages where I reside. 

 

From consumer products to government documents are written in both English & French. 

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I cannot see the Swedish delegates using Gaelic to address the French delegates in official E.U. meetings, can you?
 

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