Citizenship: Will the EU save on interpretation costs?

The EU’s translation and interpretation machinery is by far the biggest in the world. And the number of languages has nearly doubled in 2004 going from 11 to 20 official languages. And soon two more will be added (Bulgarian and Romanian) and others are likely to follow at some stage (Croatian, Serb, Albanian, Turkish).

English has gained a lot of importance since the new states have joined the EU and is increasingly the language of communication more now than French once was. And the large number of languages implies not only a complicated and heavy machinery but also high costs. And in most meeting rooms it is materially impossible to do simultaneous interpretation into so many languages. So European institutions have been saving on those costs and new languages along with Scandinavian languages are often not available in meetings. It would be undemocratic for MEPs, Ministers and other official representatives to be required to express themselves in foreign languages, but they should however be aware how much interpretation costs.
According to the EUObserver site, Finnish deputy Alexander Stubb, who has prepared a report to be voted next week by the European Parliament in Strasbourg, thinks it is particularly important for MEPs to know how much interpretation costs even when they do not show up for meetings, which happens often.

His forthcoming report criticises the EU institutions for wasting interpretation money due to bad planning. Interpretation represents less than one percent of the total EU’s budget and Mr Stubb comments that, "if that's what it takes for Europeans to understand each other in a sensible way, let's go ahead and pay for it." However, he points out that around 16 percent (€25.9 million in 2003) of the interpretation costs involve services that were ordered but not used or cancelled at the last minute.

It seems that the European Parliament is a front runner in this practise seeing almost 30 percent higher average costs than in other EU bodies - the average cost of an interpreter per day is around €1,500 for the Parliament, while the European Commission pays around €1,000. But in any case interpretation costs are high and imagine the costs when the EU will count 25 or more official languages…

Hopefully EU institutions will be able to find feasible solutions that can represent a good balance between the need to save tax payer’s money, be efficient, take account of cultural diversity and be democratic. Not an easy task, I agree…