Ever Closer Union or Babylonian Discord? The Official-Language Problem in the European Union

58 Pages Posted: 23 May 2008

See all articles by Jan Fidrmuc

Jan Fidrmuc

Brunel University - Department of Economics and Finance; L.E.M., Université de Lille; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute); Global Labor Organization (GLO); Institute for Strategy and Analysis, Government Office of the Slovak Republic

Victor A. Ginsburgh

Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) - Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE); Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) - European Center for Advanced Research in Economics and Statistics (ECARES)

Shlomo Weber

Southern Methodist University (SMU) - Department of Economics; New Economic School

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Date Written: June 2007

Abstract

Extensive multilingualism is one of the most important and fundamental principles of the European Union. However, a large number of official languages (currently 23) hinders communication and imposes substantial financial and legal costs. We address the merits of multilingualism and formulate an analytical framework to determine the optimal number of official languages in the EU. Using the results of a 2005 Eurobarometer survey of languages in the EU 27, we first derive the sets of languages that minimize aggregate linguistic disenfranchisement of the Union's citizens for any given number of languages. We then proceed by discussing the political-economy framework and feasibility of a potential linguistic reform in the EU under alternative voting rules. We argue that a six-language regime would be a reasonable intermediate choice: a lower number of official languages results in excessive linguistic disenfranchisement whereas adding further languages increases the costs but brings only modest benefits. We also show that even though a linguistic reform reducing the number of official languages to six is unlikely to gain sufficient support at the present, this may change in the future since young people are more proficient at speaking foreign languages.

Keywords: Disenfranchisement, European Union, Languages, Linguistic standardization

JEL Classification: D70, O52, Z13

Suggested Citation

Fidrmuc, Jan and Fidrmuc, Jan and Ginsburgh, Victor A. and Weber, Shlomo, Ever Closer Union or Babylonian Discord? The Official-Language Problem in the European Union (June 2007). CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP6367, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1136692

Jan Fidrmuc (Contact Author)

Brunel University - Department of Economics and Finance ( email )

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L.E.M., Université de Lille ( email )

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Global Labor Organization (GLO) ( email )

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Institute for Strategy and Analysis, Government Office of the Slovak Republic ( email )

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Victor A. Ginsburgh

Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) - Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE) ( email )

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Shlomo Weber

Southern Methodist University (SMU) - Department of Economics ( email )

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New Economic School ( email )

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