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Brussels needs to translate hundreds of thousands of pages of EU law into Basque, Galician and Catalan under a Spanish proposal, putting more pressure on Europe’s strained translation services.
Spain has asked the European Union to add the three languages to its list of 24 official languages as part of Pedro Sanchez’s efforts to win over the smaller regional parties he needs to secure a new term as prime minister.
If member states agree, the plan will require full translation acquired Translating EU law into every new language, as well as international treaties and thousands of proposals and decisions from the European Commission over the past six years.
Irish became an official and working language of the European Union in 2007, but its use has been phased in, with all documents not translated until 2022, partly because it could not attract enough people for translation positions.
“The problem is technical feasibility,” said François Green, professor of translation and interpretation at the University of Geneva. “It depends on the availability of qualified translators who can complete the task within a reasonable time frame.”
The pressure on translation services is already causing problems for the EU legislative system. European Union laws need to be translated into all 24 languages to take effect. As many as 180 pieces of legislation await parliamentary approval ahead of the next EU election in June, all of which must be translated before MEPs can approve it.
Due to the deluge of proposals related to the war in Ukraine and the energy crisis, employees “translated reams of documents with extremely tight deadlines and very limited predictability,” according to the Translation Directorate’s 2022 report.
When Parliament reconvenes in September, there will be fewer new proposals, but there is still a large backlog of texts “in advanced stages of translation”, waiting for “lawyer linguists to finalize the law”, a council official said.
According to parliamentary officials, each 100-page piece of legislation takes 30 days to translate. In 2022, the committee translated nearly 2.6 million pages, slightly below the record 2.77 million pages set in 2021.
Spain, which currently holds the EU presidency, faces the challenge of convincing other member states that the changes are worthwhile. An EU official said the council would “review” the Spanish-language requirement, adding that it was too early to tell whether the issue would be on ministers’ agenda in September.
The proposal is a sweet treat for Sanchez’s most difficult potential ally, the Catalan Solidarity Party, which has bigger demands tied to its desire for Catalonia’s independence.
Catalan, Basque and Galician have become the official languages of Spain.
According to the 2021 Spanish census, 2.1 million Catalans, One million Galicians and 350,000 residents of the Basque Country speak their respective languages as native speakers. However, in each autonomous community, Spanish is spoken more widely as a native language than the other official languages.
The current acting prime minister, Sanchez, has been in power since 2018 thanks to various left-wing and separatist parties voting for his Socialist Party. But July’s general election was inconclusive and he needs the support of Catalan and Basque parties to secure a majority and stay in office.
Aleix Clarió, Founder of Together, ex-President of Catalonia and aide to MEP Carles Puigdemont, noted that the Socialist Party made a similar move in 2022. promise, but not fulfilled.
“They’ve broken every promise, and now they’re back again.”
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