The European Court of Justice has limited the influence of the 'big language trio' – English, German and French – in the corridors of power of the European Union.
As 'Russkaya Germaniya' notes, according to established tradition, the working languages of European organizations were usually English, German and French. At the same time, in recent decades, according to observers, the official language of the Federal Republic of Germany was effectively ignored and paperwork was carried out mainly in English and French.
Interestingly, it was not Berlin but Rome and Madrid that were more outraged by the monopoly of the languages of Shakespeare and Molière. It was the Italian and Spanish governments that, back in 2012, appealed to the Luxembourg court demanding an end to language discrimination. As a result, after three years of proceedings, the judges agreed with the arguments of the plaintiffs and demanded that the European Commission no longer require job candidates for European structures to have mandatory knowledge of one of the three so-called working languages. Thus, the 'big language trio' lost its partly formal character.
According to the court, 'even taking into account the long-standing practice within the internal communication of the European Union, the assertion that English, German and French remain the most used languages is unfounded and unprovable,' the court ruling states, emphasizing that such a practice creates 'prerequisites for discrimination on linguistic grounds.' It is noted that the judges carefully studied the communication style in European structures and concluded that knowledge of specific languages, except in specific cases, is not a 'fair and proportionate in relation to the tasks set' requirement on the part of the employer.
According to observers, the court's decision will have two extremely important consequences. On the one hand, the influence of languages such as Italian and Spanish will significantly increase in the Brussels corridors. In that case, sooner or later the effect of the 'Tower of Babel' will occur, when representatives of different countries and language groups will group into 'language factions,' each of which will be simmering in its own juice. At the same time, one should expect the strengthening of English, which will remain the only generally accepted informal language for internal communication. The main victim of the court decision is called French, whose strong positions were preserved only thanks to its former official status.
By the way, for a long time the 'official' language of international diplomacy was French, and it still is the official 'postal' language. In recent decades, the status of international 'lingua franca' has passed to English.
The UN has six official languages: English, Arabic, Spanish, Chinese, Russian and French. The same languages are working languages for the UN Security Council. The working languages of the UN Secretariat are English and French.