German as an EU language

German is one of the currently 21 EU languages accorded equal status under EEC Council Regulation No. 1 of 1958.

Under the equal status principle, all legal texts, other documents of general application drawn up by the institutions of the Union and the Official Journal must be published in all official EU languages (full language regime). EU nationals are entitled, moreover, to address written communications to an EU institution or body in any of the 21 official EU languages and to receive a reply in the same language.

For practical reasons those concerned may agree on alternatives to the full-language regime at working level. A distinction needs to be made, however, between internal communication within the various EU institutions and communication in EU bodies involved in negotiations.

In the Commission English and French predominate at working level, since at this level no translation/interpretation services are provided and not many of its officials have German language skills. The Federal Government is therefore working for such skills to be recognized as a career-enhancing qualification and has taken steps to make German courses for this target group more attractive.

When the college of Commissioners meets, it negotiates on the basis of documents prepared in German, English and French and full interpretation in these languages is provided.

At meetings of other EU negotiating bodies (e.g. Council meetings) normally the full-language regime applies, unless in certain areas - for reasons of efficiency or cost - it has been agreed or become standard practice to use only a limited number of working languages with or without the provision of interpretation/translation services. Hence German/English/French are used and interpretation services provided at meetings of COREPER, ECOFIN, the Economic Policy Committee and Euro-11 bodies and also accession negotiations; in other cases English and French are used with no interpretation services provided (current practice at working level and in the COREU communication network of the Common Foreign and Security Policy) or English only is used. In selected Council preparatory bodies new arrangements known as the request-and-pay system have been introduced since May 2004 to cope with the EU's now 21 official languages. Under this system member states may choose whether or not they wish to have interpretation services provided in their own language in a particular preparatory body. Germany has opted to have full interpretation provided in all relevant bodies. While this new system is partially paid for by the member states, its cost is still considerably lower than the alternative, a Community-funded system providing full interpretation in all 21 official languages.