Does lack of language skills threaten UK influence in Europe?
by Justin Stares
06 September 2011
Britain risks losing influence in the European Union if the nosedive in foreign language skills is not redressed, according to the European Commission. The prediction follows news that the number of British pupils gaining a basic GCSE qualification in any foreign language has dropped by 45 per cent over the last decade.
There will be fewer qualified British applicants for institutions such as the European Commission, says Dennis Abbott, commission spokesman for multilingualism. "It will be more difficult to get jobs in the EU," Abbott told PublicServiceEurope.com. "For Britain this will mean a loss of influence".
The commission requires all candidates to have a "thorough knowledge" of one of the EU's 23 official languages plus a "satisfactory knowledge" of a second. After recruitment, officials are supposed to demonstrate competence in a third language before they can be considered for their first promotion. While these might be strict legal requirements, the reality is different. The commission has become largely Anglophone. English is not only the lingua franca among officials; it is the "pivot" language for most translations. "English is the source language for many documents. More documents are translated into English and from English than any other," says Abbott.
English has all but eclipsed the commission's former lingua franca, French. There are still forums where French is spoken, such as the commission's midday press briefings, but those with a preference for the Gallic tongue are generally either French themselves or part of a nostalgic clique. This change is the result of EU enlargement towards the north – the UK, Ireland, Sweden, Finland – and the to the east to Poland, Czech Republic, Malta, where education systems are more geared towards English than French. It is also the result of the commission's ever-closer relationship with business and industry.
French-speakers have not given up without a fight. British commissioners, including Catherine Ashton, are still criticised on occasion for their poor French skills. In 2006, former French President Jacques Chirac melodramatically stormed out of an EU summit when a French business leader, Ernest-Antoine Seilliere, addressed the gathering in English. Chirac was "deeply shocked" while Seilliere, leader of employers' association UNICE at the time, pointed out that he was merely speaking the language of business.
Such incidents are, however, the last hurrahs of the Gallic lobby. A British commissioner in Brussels might come in for a little stick for not speaking fluent French, but a French commissioner without good English on the other hand risks simply being misunderstood or ignored.
This was the case when Jacques Barrot, France's former Brussels commissioner, addressed dinners and drinks events in his mother tongue. Given that no interpretation was provided at these informal events, many of the industry executives had no idea what he saying. Can you imagine France's current representative, Michel Barnier, commissioner for the internal market, explaining the EU's bank stress tests to the financial markets in French? The misunderstandings that could arise would be enough to set off the next market crash. When Barnier talks to Bloomberg news, he does so in English. While they might understand French, the commission's spokesmen and spokeswomen often apologise before replying to a journalist's question in English at briefings.
The next logical step would be to do away with the tower of babel and make English the official lingua franca rather than the unofficial one. Just think of the savings: interpretation and translation cost the EU institutions €1.1bn a year. Didn't the Roman Empire, the forerunner of the EU, get by using just Latin and Greek? Such an idea would, however, be unacceptable for two reasons.
First, it would ruffle lots of feathers. Governments are emotionally attached to their languages. The tendency is in fact for regional languages such as Catalan and Basque to be given some sort of EU recognition, though they are not official languages. Second, the existing system allows member states to send their best experts to Brussels rather than their best linguists. Given the highly technical nature of some of the debates, this is a plus, though it puts a lot of pressure on interpreters, who have to have an intimate knowledge of the subject matter.
But there is a downside to the existing regime. Interpretation between more esoteric languages such as, for example, Hungarian and Estonian, can take place via a third "relay" language, such as English. If the Hungarian speaker throws in a pun or unusual idiom, the chances of it reaching the Estonian listener are, with respect to the EU's interpreting team, pretty slim. Brian Simpson, one of the European Parliament's more colourful committee chairs, once told an official: "If you're in a hole, stop digging". How many of those in the committee room, or the many listening to the web-streamed event across the EU, understood the true meaning of these words?
The obligation to translate all important texts into every official language can also have unfortunate legal consequences. The principle applies to European Economic Area countries such as Iceland and Norway. But given that there are few translators capable of working on EU texts in these languages, a large backlog has built up. Some measures are not applicable until translated and published in the Official Journal of the EU, by which time temporary measures such as rescue aid for distressed industries can have expired.
Britain's coalition government has announced that it will look to reverse the country's linguistic deficit. "Good language skills are very important to countries' influence in the widest sense – diplomatically, culturally, in business – and the UK government is right to encourage the learning of languages," Damian Hinds, Conservative MP for East Hampshire and member of the Commons education select committee told PublicServiceEurope.com.
He was however sceptical about claims of reduced representation in the EU. "This is a quite separate question from countries' official representation in international bodies," he said. Indeed, if under-represented in the commission, the UK could push for a special recruitment drive, or perhaps an exemption from the foreign language requirements. After all, the only language you really need to work in the EU is English.
There will be fewer qualified British applicants for institutions such as the European Commission, says Dennis Abbott, commission spokesman for multilingualism. "It will be more difficult to get jobs in the EU," Abbott told PublicServiceEurope.com. "For Britain this will mean a loss of influence".
The commission requires all candidates to have a "thorough knowledge" of one of the EU's 23 official languages plus a "satisfactory knowledge" of a second. After recruitment, officials are supposed to demonstrate competence in a third language before they can be considered for their first promotion. While these might be strict legal requirements, the reality is different. The commission has become largely Anglophone. English is not only the lingua franca among officials; it is the "pivot" language for most translations. "English is the source language for many documents. More documents are translated into English and from English than any other," says Abbott.
English has all but eclipsed the commission's former lingua franca, French. There are still forums where French is spoken, such as the commission's midday press briefings, but those with a preference for the Gallic tongue are generally either French themselves or part of a nostalgic clique. This change is the result of EU enlargement towards the north – the UK, Ireland, Sweden, Finland – and the to the east to Poland, Czech Republic, Malta, where education systems are more geared towards English than French. It is also the result of the commission's ever-closer relationship with business and industry.
French-speakers have not given up without a fight. British commissioners, including Catherine Ashton, are still criticised on occasion for their poor French skills. In 2006, former French President Jacques Chirac melodramatically stormed out of an EU summit when a French business leader, Ernest-Antoine Seilliere, addressed the gathering in English. Chirac was "deeply shocked" while Seilliere, leader of employers' association UNICE at the time, pointed out that he was merely speaking the language of business.
Such incidents are, however, the last hurrahs of the Gallic lobby. A British commissioner in Brussels might come in for a little stick for not speaking fluent French, but a French commissioner without good English on the other hand risks simply being misunderstood or ignored.
This was the case when Jacques Barrot, France's former Brussels commissioner, addressed dinners and drinks events in his mother tongue. Given that no interpretation was provided at these informal events, many of the industry executives had no idea what he saying. Can you imagine France's current representative, Michel Barnier, commissioner for the internal market, explaining the EU's bank stress tests to the financial markets in French? The misunderstandings that could arise would be enough to set off the next market crash. When Barnier talks to Bloomberg news, he does so in English. While they might understand French, the commission's spokesmen and spokeswomen often apologise before replying to a journalist's question in English at briefings.
The next logical step would be to do away with the tower of babel and make English the official lingua franca rather than the unofficial one. Just think of the savings: interpretation and translation cost the EU institutions €1.1bn a year. Didn't the Roman Empire, the forerunner of the EU, get by using just Latin and Greek? Such an idea would, however, be unacceptable for two reasons.
First, it would ruffle lots of feathers. Governments are emotionally attached to their languages. The tendency is in fact for regional languages such as Catalan and Basque to be given some sort of EU recognition, though they are not official languages. Second, the existing system allows member states to send their best experts to Brussels rather than their best linguists. Given the highly technical nature of some of the debates, this is a plus, though it puts a lot of pressure on interpreters, who have to have an intimate knowledge of the subject matter.
But there is a downside to the existing regime. Interpretation between more esoteric languages such as, for example, Hungarian and Estonian, can take place via a third "relay" language, such as English. If the Hungarian speaker throws in a pun or unusual idiom, the chances of it reaching the Estonian listener are, with respect to the EU's interpreting team, pretty slim. Brian Simpson, one of the European Parliament's more colourful committee chairs, once told an official: "If you're in a hole, stop digging". How many of those in the committee room, or the many listening to the web-streamed event across the EU, understood the true meaning of these words?
The obligation to translate all important texts into every official language can also have unfortunate legal consequences. The principle applies to European Economic Area countries such as Iceland and Norway. But given that there are few translators capable of working on EU texts in these languages, a large backlog has built up. Some measures are not applicable until translated and published in the Official Journal of the EU, by which time temporary measures such as rescue aid for distressed industries can have expired.
Britain's coalition government has announced that it will look to reverse the country's linguistic deficit. "Good language skills are very important to countries' influence in the widest sense – diplomatically, culturally, in business – and the UK government is right to encourage the learning of languages," Damian Hinds, Conservative MP for East Hampshire and member of the Commons education select committee told PublicServiceEurope.com.
He was however sceptical about claims of reduced representation in the EU. "This is a quite separate question from countries' official representation in international bodies," he said. Indeed, if under-represented in the commission, the UK could push for a special recruitment drive, or perhaps an exemption from the foreign language requirements. After all, the only language you really need to work in the EU is English.
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