The Economist, August 6th 1994

Germany, the leading power in the European Union, is still virtually speechless in Brussels. EU officials and diplomats blithely go on drafting laws and negotiating in French and English. To the dismay of Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his colleagues, German is virtually nowhere to be heard. German texts are generally produced by translators in the same way as those in minor tongues such as Greek and Danish.

The French culture minister, Jacques Toubon, fretting that his campaign to keep French pure is not taken seriously, would find comfort in Brussels. Not only has French withstood the onslaught of English since Britain joined 21 years ago, Euro-English is peppered with French expressions, almost as much as the other way round. The heads of commissioners' private offices are known universally as 'chefs de cabinet'. Just about everybody knows the powerful ambassadors' committee which prepares ministerial meetings as Coreper - its French shorthand.

His rhetorical hackles rising, Mr Kohl has long wanted the language of Goethe to be spoken in Brussels with the same vivacity and frequency as those of Balzac and Byron. Since unification, German is by far the most widely spoken mother-tongue in the EU. Add to 80m Germans the citizens of Austria, which joins the Union next january, plus a dusting of native German-speakers in Belgium, Luxembourg, Alsace and the South Tyrol (oops, Alto Adige) and the figure tops 88m. English (don't forget the Irish) and French (counting Belgium's Walloons) peak at about 60m each.

So the German tongue is wagging. German diplomats and commissioners are instructed to speak German at formal meetings of the commission and of Coreper. They sometimes insist on speaking German at public engagements. But it is hard to spread German merely through the example of Mr Kohl's top dogs.

Although the EU has nine official languages, German is already technically one of the three "privileged" working languages, with French and English. The trouble is that few Eurocrats work in it. The first foreign language for most Greek, Portuguese, Italian or Spanish 'fonctionnaires' (another one for your list, Monsieur Toubon) is French or English.

The EU's use of language makes all its members twitch. When the German commissioners, Martin Bangemann and Peter Schmidhuber, started using German at formal meetings, their Italian colleagues insisted on speaking Italian. Alas for the Dutch, Spaniards, Greeks, Portuguese and Danes (not to mention the Basques, Catalans and those who might like to display their powers of persuasion in Letzeburgish or the Langue d'Oc, none of whose languages counts as "officials"), only four interpreters' booths serve the commission's main meeting room.

The language issue is coming to a head. The Germans will go on demanding better treatment. And the present nine official languages will become 12 next January, if Finland, Sweden and Norway vote to join the polyglottal Union later this year.

It has already been agreed, post-enlargement, that delegates at ministerial meetings will go on being able to spout in their mother-tongues, presenting translators with a mere 132 combinations - Finnish to Greek, Portuguese to Norwegian, and so on. A total of 75 new interpreters are to gabble away in Brussels. Another 300 translators will soon be churming out reams of dismal document in the extra lingos.

But the pouring forth of multilingual screeds will have to be stemmed. One idea is to translate all legislative texts into all 12 languages - but only at the final draft. This, at least, cannot be avoided, because the texts can end up as law throughout the Union. Earlier drafts would come out in fewer languages, perhaps - 'Donner und Blitzen!' - just the Big Three, naturally including German.