The European Union has seen the virtual dismantling of national borders in the 27 official member states, and has catalysed physical, economic, political, and cultural integration. Possibly the biggest barrier that still exists within the continent today is language.
There are now 23 official languages within the EU itself, although most official work is still conducted in only three; English, German, and French. The first four official languages, in 1950, were Dutch, Italian, German and French, and the latest languages to become officiated within the EU were Bulgaria, Irish, and Romanian in 2007.
The full list of the 23 official languages are as follows; Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Irish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish.
German is the most widely spoken mother tongue of all the EU languages, and over half of all adults can understand English. French has the advantage of being the native language within all three of the EU political centres; Brussels (Belgium), Strasbourg (France) and Luxembourg City (Luxembourg). There has been much debate recently over whether the Union should adopt a sole tongue, but with English being the frontrunner, there are many who see this as a further Anglicisation of the world.
Language does, however, pose complications when it comes to integration, and it is estimated that since the expansion of the Union in 2007, language translation services will have to deal with 2.5 million pages per year for European Commission’s use alone. This doesn’t come cheaply, with an estimated annual cost of 550 million to 800 million euros spent each year, much of which would be saved by installing one sole working language.
The biggest complication that comes when discussing a sole EU language is in determining whether the most suitable language is the one with the most native speakers, or the one with the most overall comprehension. To illustrate this issue, you can view the table below, which details the top languages in the EU according to native speakers and alternatively general comprehension.
| Rank | Language | Native Speakers (%) | Language | Speakers ( % including foreign language skills) |
| 1 | German | 19 | English | 45 |
| 2 | French | 13 | German | 39 |
| 3 | English | 12 | French | 26 |
| 4 | Italian | 11 | Italian | 16 |
| 5 | Spanish | 9 | Spanish | 15 |
| 6 | Polish | 9 | Polish | 10 |
| 7 | Romanian | 7 | Russian | 7 |
| 8 | Dutch | 5 | Dutch | 6 |
Of course with a higher number of individuals with the ability to understand English, it would make sense for that to be the adopted language. It also has to be considered that the percentage of MEPs (Members of European Parliament) who couldn’t speak English would be extremely low, and thus official business matters would not be hugely impacted.
There is, however, a contrasting push by the European Union to enhance the multilingual nature of the continent, and it has set the ambitious goal of enabling each of its citizens to speak two languages in addition to their native tongue. In some parts of the EU this is a more realistic aim with 90% of citizens in Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden claiming to have a proficiency in a second language. On the flip side of things, however, just 34% of Irish citizens and 38% of Britons claim to have the ability to hold a conversation in any language other than their mother tongue.