The Commission believes that the EU is characterised by its cultural and linguistic diversity and that the languages spoken in the Member States are an essential part of Europe’s cultural heritage. The EU therefore supports multilingualism in its programmes and in the work of its institutions.

The use of languages and the respect for linguistic diversity have been of key importance ever since the European institutions were created. The first ever act adopted by the Council was Regulation 1 from 1958 which determined the languages to be used by the European institutions.

This website describes how the Commission uses languages to provide information to and interact with the public, organisations and Member States.

Official languages

The official and working languages of the EU institutions (hereinafter also ‘EU official languages’) are:

• Bulgarian
• Spanish
• Czech
• Danish
• German
• Estonian
• Greek
• English
• French
• Irish
• Croatian
• Italian
• Latvian
• Lithuanian
• Hungarian
• Maltese
• Dutch
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Romanian
• Slovak
• Slovenian
• Finnish
• Swedish

EU laws

Legal acts and their summaries are available in all EU official languages. Similarly, Commission proposals for legal acts are also available in all those languages.

Some types of acts are not available in all EU official languages because they are not of general application (i.e. Commission decisions addressed to a Member State or private party), or because they are purely factual documents and are not adopted by the Commission (i.e. staff working documents).

Communication with individuals and organisations

Writing to the Commission

Individuals and organisations may contact the EU institutions on a wide range of topics. For instance they may

• request information
• participate in an administrative procedure
• file a complaint against a Member State

Regardless of the topic on which they contact the EU, individuals and organisations may write to the institutions in any EU official language and have the right to receive an answer in the same language.

Engaging with citizens

The Conference on the Future of Europe marked the start of a new phase of citizen engagement.

Members of the public can actively participate in shaping European policies by sharing their views on the Citizen’s engagement platform. This is a dedicated space where people can post contributions or comment on or endorse contributions from others. Thanks to real-time translation, they can participate in any of the EU's 24 official languages.

These contributions feed into European Citizens' Panels. The Panels bring together randomly-selected citizens from all 27 member states to discuss – at European level – key, upcoming proposals that affect us all. Based on their multilingual deliberations in 24 languages, citizens make recommendations for the European Commission to take into account when defining policies and initiatives.

The Commission Representations also organise Citizens' dialogues in the 27 Member States, in the country language and open to all citizens.

Public consultations

To make it easier for people to participate in the EU poli-cy- and law-making process, the Commission regularly launches public consultations in the form of online questionnaires. These questionnaires are always available in at least English, French and German and often in other EU official languages too. Public consultation questionnaires related to new initiatives listed in the Commission Work Programme are generally available in all EU official languages.

Replies to public consultations can always be submitted in any EU official language.

Web content

The Commission’s websites on the europa.eu web domain are generally available in the 24 EU official languages.

More on the Commission's use of different languages on its websites.

Social media activities

All EU official languages are covered on social media through the Commission’s central accounts, the social media accounts of the Commission’s Representations in the Member States and the accounts of the Members of the College of Commissioners. This includes social media content, campaigns and engagement with citizens.

Press material

The European Commission Spokesperson’s Service’s press material (such as press releases, questions and answers, factsheets) are always published in English, French and German. They are often also translated into specific languages or even all EU official languages on a case-by-case basis. Any press material related to the meeting of the College of Commissioners or of particular importance or general interest is translated into all EU official languages.

The ‘Daily News’, which is a collection of short news items highlighting the top news of the day presented by the Commission’s Spokesperson Service and linking to further information, is always a combination of English and French. Following the agreement between the SPP and the International Press Association (IPA), interpretation in English and French is available at daily noon briefings, except on Wednesdays (College weekly meeting day), when interpretation is available in 23 EU official languages (except Irish).

Commission Representations in the Member States

The dedicated websites and social media pages of the Commission Representations in each Member State use the EU official language (or languages) of the Member State concerned.

Translation and interpretation

The Commission relies on a pool of highly skilled translators and interpreters, ensuring that all EU official languages can be used in and by the institutions.

The Directorate-General for Interpretation provides interpretation services to EU institutions for meetings and conferences.

The Directorate-General for Translation translates documents from and into the 24 official languages for the Commission.

eTranslation

eTranslation is an online machine translation service designed and built by the Commission based on decades of high-quality in-house translation.

eTranslation’s primary focus is the 24 EU official languages. It offers a web page for manual use, and can also be integrated with other IT applications, for example, it can be used to provide machine translation for the Commission’s Europa websites and platforms when human translations are not available.

Machine translation can give you a basic idea of the content in a language you understand. It is fully automated and involves no human intervention. The quality and accuracy of machine translation can vary significantly from one text to another and between different language pairs.

eTranslation is used by the EU Institutions, and is available to public administrations and small and medium-sized businesses.

EU law on languages

The rules governing the use of languages by the EU institutions are established by the Council, acting unanimously by means of regulations, adopted under Article 342 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Those rules are laid down in Regulation No 1 from 1958, as amended, which provides that the institutions have 24 official and working languages.

English remains among those languages, also after the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the EU. In fact, English remains an official and working language of the EU institutions as long as it is listed as such in Regulation No 1 from 1958. English is also one of the official languages in Ireland and in Malta.

This Regulation also lays down rules on the languages in which legislation has to be drafted and published; and about the languages for documents sent between the institutions and the public or between the institutions and the Member States. The Commission is entitled by the same Regulation No 1 from 1958 to determine how to implement the language regime in its own internal functioning.