Based on the Regulation 1/58/EEC on language use, the different languages may be used in different spheres of official communication within the Union, further-more, EU funding for the protection and promotion of the different languages varies.222
216 Schermers & Waelbroeck 2002, p. 83.
217 Király 2007, p. 39.
218 Gazzola 2006, p. 396.
219 Niamh Nic Shuibhne, ‘CaseC-361/01’, Common Market Law Review, Vol.41, 2004, pp.1095–1096.
220 According to the Opinion rendered by Advocate General Maduro in the Spain v Eurojust case, the Council is entrusted with the task of determining the language regime of the institutions, while
‘Union institutions and bodies enjoy only a limited discretion for the implementation of that regime.
They must not be allowed to use it otherwise than for the purposes of their internal operational needs’ and only in compliance with the principle of non-discrimination. Opinion of AG Maduro [ECR I-2093-94], points 48-49.
221 Joined cases T-124/13 and T-191/13, Italian Republic and Kingdom of Spain v European Commission, judgment of of 24 September 2015, not yet published; Petra Lea Láncos, ‘Egy tag-állam harca a nyelvi egyenjogúságért: az uniós versenyvizsgák nyelvhasználati szabályainak újra-hangolása’, Pázmány Law Working Papers, 2015/13. http://plwp.eu/legfrissebb/151-lancos-petra- lea-egy-tagallamharca-a-nyelvi-egyenjogusagert-az-unios-versenyvizsgak-nyelvhasznalati-szabalyainakujrahangolasa-nr-2015-13
222 This situation changed with the new rights introduced in Art. 21 and 22 of the Charter.
8.1 Official languages
According to Article 55 paragraph 1 TEU ‘This Treaty, drawn up in a single original in the Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish lan-guages, the texts in each of these languages being equally authenti[c]’. Neither the Treaty, nor the Regulation makes any differentiation between the Treaty lan-guages and the official lanlan-guages, therefore, certain scholars arrived at the con-clusion that the ‘principle of the equality of languages’ forms part of the Euro-pean constitutional order.223 This principle seems to be further substantiated by the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice, according to which, when in-terpreting the meaning of European law, all authentic language versions of the Treaties must be taken into account.224 Finally, in the Kik judgement the Court expressly negated the existence of such a principle.225 Article 6 of the Regulation actually reinforces the assumption that a differentiation between the official lan-guages is legitimate when stipulated in the rules of procedure of the institutions.
Therefore, Article 6 of the Regulation may serve as the basis for the restriction of the scope of official languages used by the institutions in their internal and in-ter-institutional communication.226 Furthermore, the Regulation only applies to institutions of the Union, thus, bodies, offices and agencies of the Union are not covered by it. As a result, these Union actors are not obliged to use all official languages in their communication with the citizens and may legitimately restrict their interaction with third parties to certain working languages.227
These considerations notwithstanding, it is important to note that although the institutions make use of the possibility of nominating a limited set of working languages for the purposes of internal and inter-institutional communication, none of the institutions actually stipulated such languages as official languages in their rules of procedure as foreseen under Article 6 of the Regulation. This means that there is no legal basis for the European Commission to invoke Eng-lish, French and German as its working languages.
223 Bruno De Witte, ‘Language Law of the European Union: Protecting or Eroding Linguistic Diver-sity’, in: Crauford Smith (ed.), Culture and European Union Law, 2004, p. 221.
224 Mayer 2005, p. 372., E.g.: Judgment of 3 March 1977 in Case 80/76, North Kerry Milk, [1977] ECR 425., Judgment of 6 October in Case C-283/81, Cilfit, [1982] ECR 3415.
225 Judgment of 9 September 2003 in Case C-361/01, P. Kik v OHIM, [2003] ECR 8283, item 87.;
Király 2007, p. 46.
226 de Witte 2008, p. 179; Arzoz 2008, p. 178.
227 de Witte 2008, p.179.; Case C-361/01. P. Kik v OHIM.
8.2 Non-official languages spoken in the EU
As the official languages of the Union are all official and majority languages of the respective Member States it would seem logical that the minority languages of the Union are non-official languages. However, the picture is much more var-ied. According to Felföldi, minority langugages may be classified as follows:
i) Officially recognized language which is not an official language of the Union (eg.: Letzeburgesch);
ii) Minority language spoken in only one Member State or a region thereof (eg.: Sorbian in Germany);
iii) Minority languages spoken in various Member States (eg.: Cata-lan);
iv) Minority languages with a kin-state (eg.: Hungarian);
v) Deterritorialized languages (eg.: Romani, Yiddish).228
As regards the fourth category, although for example Hungarian is a minority language in certain Member States, it is at the same time an official language of the Union and the majority language in Hungary.229 There are other minority lan-guages that have a kin-state, such as Turkish or Russian, these states are how-ever not members of the Union. We may conclude that the non-official lan-guages of the Union constitute a complex category which is difficult to define, since it comprises autochthonous minority, regional and deterritorialized lan-guages as well as immigrant lanlan-guages. The Union has a varied approach to-wards these languages: some may achieve a sort of ‘semi-official status’, others may be eligible for funding, while the rest are largely neglected, such as the im-migrant languages in general.230
8.3 Privileged non-official languages and other, lesser used languages
The first category of non-official languages is that of the ‘privileged non-official languages’ which comprise according to Lanstyák all non-official languages of the Union which are co-official or regional official languages in a Member State.231 Following the Lisbon amendment Article 55 paragraph 2 of the Treaty on the European Union, the ‘[T]reaty may also be translated into any other lan-guages as determined by Member States among those which, in accordance with
228 Felföldi 2011, p. 3.
229 Nelu Bradean-Ebinger, ‘Kisebbségi és regionális nyelvek az EU-ban’, Dél-Kelet Európa, Vol. 2, No.
2, 2011, p. 4.
230 Skutnabb-Kangas 2002, p. 10.
231 István Lanstyák, ‘Az Európai Unió nyelvpolitikája es a Szlovákiában beszélt nyelvek’, Társadalom-tudományi Szemle, Vol. 6, 2004, p. 49.
their constitutional order, enjoy official status in all or part of their territory. A certified copy of such translations shall be provided by the Member States con-cerned to be deposited in the archives of the Council.’ Based on the administra-tive agreement concluded between the Spanish government and the Union insti-tutions,232 certain acts adopted in ordinary legislative procedure shall be trans-lated to Catalan, Galician and Basque. Speeches may be held in these languages in certain institutions and in order to facilitate the communication between speakers of these languages and the Union institutions, Spain shall appoint inter-mediary bodies. All costs incurred as a result of the ‘semi-official status’ of these langauges shall be borne by Spain (paragraph 11 of the administrative agree-ment) and the Council shall not be liable for the precision of the translations made (paragraph 1 item c).
It is important to note that it is only the Member States that may initiate af-fording a ‘semi-official status’ to a language, that is, the Union level emancipa-tion of a language is dependent on Member State acemancipa-tion. At the same time the eligible language groups are also restricted, as non-autochthonous languages (such as the case of most immigrant languages) are excluded from this possibil-ity). As regards the concrete administrative agreement already in force, the agreement is only applicable to Spanish citizens, therefore, those French citi-zens, who speak Basque for example as their mother tongue (in the Pyrénées-At-lantiques) cannot make use of this possibility.
The translations made in these languages are not deemed authentic, the Union has no relationship to these languages and all related costs are borne by Spain.233 Milian-Massana points out that this form of recognition may therefore not be deemed a novel institutional status,234 however, it may be a starting point for the future delimitation of such autochthonous languages from other non-official languages and for the institutional recognition of the same on the Union level.235 According to Bradean-Ebinger there is an increasing pressure on the Union to recognise such languages on the EU level, since they are spoken by more the 10 million union citizens.236
The category of other, lesser used languages includes languages which are not official languages of either the Union or the Members States, however, and the protection afforded to these languages vary greatly. According to Lanstyák there are three possible categories of such languages: languages protected by law, lan-guages not recognized by law and prohibited lanlan-guages. Lanlan-guages protected by
232 OJ C 40/2. 2006.02.17.
233 Ibid., pp. 218–219.
234 Milian-Massana, ‘Languages that are official in part of the territory of the Member States’, in: Arzoz 2008, p. 203.
235 Ibid., p. 219.
236 Bradean-Ebinger 2011, p. 4.
law are those, which are afforded some level of protection, potentially also sup-ported institutionally or through education.237 Languages not recognized by law have no status whatsoever, however, their use is tolerated by the state.238 Today, there are no languages that are prohibited in the Member States of the EU.
8.4 Immigrant languages
In the second half of the 20th century the Member States of the European Com-munities became target countries for immigration.239 According to their mother tongue, immigrants may be categorized into two groups: i) immigrants who speak a European language as their native language and ii) immigrants who speak a non-European language. The latter are put at a great disadvantage due to the fact that their languages are not recognized neither on the Union level, nor – as is usually the case – the Member State level.240 According to some studies, the proportion of immigrants may reach 8 percent in certain Member States.241 Extra and Verhoeven point out that while the majority of Western European states sup-ported the language use of immigrants in the media or education during the eighties, the situation changed in the nineties where many Member States intro-duced assimilationist policies with the justification that the linguistic adaptation of immigrant groups is actually in their own best interest.242
The emerging immigration policy of the Union seems to fall in line with this trend: in the Vichy Declaration243 the European Commission stressed that com-prehensive integration strategies must be adopted including language pro-grammes and courses on the history, instituions and values of the Union. 244 Not only does this mean that the cultural and linguistic heritage of such immigrants are neglected for the purposes of successful integration, immigrants who be-come union citizens but speak a non-official language of the EU are at a disad-vantage compared to other union citizens when it comes to political participa-tion. Finally, immigrant languages are only supported from EU funds when such funding serves the competitiveness of the European market. Therefore, the
237 Lanstyák 2004, p. 51.
238 Ibid. For example minority languages in France before 2008.
239 Guus Extra & Ludo Verhoeven (eds.), Immigrant Languages in Europe, Multilingual Matters, Clevedon, 1993, p. 3.
240 Jan Fidrmuc, Victor Ginsburgh & Shlomo Weber, ‘Economic Challenges of Multilingual Societies’, Working Paper, No.11/04, 2006, p. 9.
241 Extra & Verhoeven 1993, p. 6.
242 Ibid., pp. 10–11.
243 Vichy Declaration 14898/8, 9 December 2008. Brussels.
244 European Commission, Strengthening actions and tools to meet integration challenges, Report to the 2008 Ministerial Conference on Integration, Commission Staff Working Document, SEC(2008) 2626, Brussels, 8 October 2008(b).
learning of only those widely spoken non-European languages shall be financed, the kin-states of which are important commercial partners of the EU.245
Based on the language regime of the Union, different categories of languages emerge, amounting to a hierarchy between the languages spoken in the territory of the EU. Consequently, we may state that the multilevel language regime of the Union is based on the model of ‘restricted multilingualism’,246 since only a fraction of the languages spoken in the territory of the Union is represented in the internal and external communication of the institutions, bodies and agencies of the Union.