As a Member of the European Parliament I am always amazed when other people complain about the difficulties caused by using so many different languages at work. This has never been a problem for me and I say that as a person who speaks only English, Welsh and a smattering of French. The standard of interpretation in meetings and translation of documents is excellent.
It is a remarkable feat for a remarkable institution like the EU that it can operate using twenty different official languages, as it does now. But it works - and works well.
More importantly it allows each member state to play its full part in discussions and decisions and MEPs from every member state to do the same. It reflects the richness and diversity of Europe - but only part of it. The twenty languages are not the whole story. There are actually forty million people who speak a regional or minority language in the countries of the European Union. At present those languages are invisible.
The Convention set up to discuss the future of Europe and draft the new constitution has proved to be the catalyst for change. Following discussions in the Convention, the success of the Irish EU Presidency and the change of government in Spain things began to move.
In July the Irish Prime Minister called for Irish to be a working language of the Union. At present Irish has the status only of a treaty language. This means that the main treaties are translated but other documents are not. Now Irish will be one of the languages which can be used in EU meetings.
Following this declaration the Foreign Minister of Spain proposed at the end of July that Catalan, Basque and Galician should have official status. These languages are official within their own territories but are not official state languages in Spain. In January a process of adapting the Spanish constitution will begin that will remedy this so that it will then be possible for Spain to request official European status for them in the EU.
Once this precedent has been set, there should be no obstacle to Welsh getting the same status. The only possible difficulty is that the decision to ask for Welsh to be a working language of the European Union must be made by the government in Westminster. Despite a favourable response to Plaid Cymru's request to translate the new EU constitution into Welsh, New Labour are not in favour of official status in the EU. A campaign would be needed to persuade them otherwise.
If the UK proposed a change to the EU languages regulation they would in the first instance need to translate the body of EU law but once a working language has been accepted the EU would be responsible for all written and simultaneous translation.
Which brings us to the issue always raised by the opponents of bilingualism or, in this case, multilingualism: cost.
It's true that the EU is funded by public money and therefore that we in Wales currently subsidise the costs of other official languages as well as English. But we have to put the cost into its real perspective. When preparing their application for official status the Irish estimated that the entire translation budget is 1% of the total EU budget, which actually works out about 2 euros per citizen per year - about £1.40 for each of us. It is estimated on the basis of the post enlargement situation that an additional 20 posts per language would need to be created.
This is more than balanced by the benefits. It would raise the profile of Wales on the European stage and make more people aware of the language and the existence of Wales as a country.
This would help our economy and tourism industry.and would also be of benefit to bilingual people in Wales as knowledge of 2 official EU languages is a basic requirement for most EU jobs.
Like Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia and Ireland, Wales already has a developed translation industry which could grow to meet the needs of Welsh as an EU working language. The EU has already successfully adapted for Maltese to become a working language - a language which is spoken by fewer people than Welsh of course - and with the prospects of Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey and Croatia joining the EU in the not too distant future, translation scholarships for those languages are already available.
At the moment Wales is missing out and it's time to change that. I do not believe that it is realistic to insist that all documents and meetings would need Welsh translation from day one. A phasing-in process, as Ireland have adopted, could be the model for us too. Last week I became the first MEP to legally address the Parliament in Welsh since new rules were adopted last month which allow us to use non-official EU languages, albeit without translation. As I said then Europe has to improve the way it communicates with its people and there is no better way of doing this than through peoples own languages.
I believe that the time has come for Welsh to have official language status and be a working language in Europe. It's a question of right that Welsh should be treated equally to the languages of other countries in Europe. There is nothing more fundamental that the right to use your own language.
Jill Evans MEP
