German MEPs seek end to ‘French language dominance’

German MEPs have asked European parliament president Josep Borrell for more texts in German and fewer in French.

German centre-right MEP Michael Gahler is collecting signatures in the parliament to support his bid for Brussels to be “visibly multilingual” and speak more German.

Together with 13 German-speaking colleagues, Gahler has written a letter to Borrell asking him to end the dominance of French in EU politics, reports German daily Die Welt.

Gahler notes that since enlargement, German has become the most widely understood language of the EU after English, with one in three Europeans speaking German.

German MEPs also outnumber their French counterparts. Of the 732 MEPs, 120 speak German as their mother tongue compared to just 84 for French.

Among Gahler’s grievances is that fact that the exit signs in parliament are written in French, as are the menus in its restaurant.

Delegates were also annoyed when a recent Strasbourg invitation to have lunch with German president Horst Kohler was sent out only in French.

It is not the first time calls for increasing the presence of German in Brussels have made headlines.

Earlier this week, FT Deutschland revealed that top EU officials are learning German.

Students include Estonian transparency commssioner Siim Kallas, Latvian energy commissioner Andris Piebalgs and Poland’s Danuta Hübner, commissioner for regional policy.

The European Ombudsman Nikiforos Diamandouros recently backed calls for EU presidency websites to be published in more languages following a complaint from a German language defence association.

However, Finland, which takes over the EU presidency from Austria in July, has already said it will stick to English and French.

• Previous article
• Next article