On Language Policies And Problems Of The European Union

Formation of the European Union is seemingly the first political act of such vast magnitude in perhaps the whole of our history of bringing so many independent nations so closely together. Beginning as the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), with its top priority to bring peace to the war-torn Europe and achieve some economic cooperation between the European nations, the European Union has developed into a unique supranational organization with substantial economic and political integration over the past half century. At the same time, a common European identity and culture is also coming into being. As the most important part of culture, language has always been held high by the EU. One of the founding principles of the European Union is respect for the diversity of the Union's languages: European languages are equal in value and dignity and form an integral part of European culture and civilization. Due to this principle, the European Union relentlessly pushes forward the policy of multilingualism, especially the official multilingualism, to make sure that all the EU languages have the same right, and all the European citizens will not be discriminated for the languages they speak. According to this policy, each country decides, when joining the European Union, which of its national languages it wishes to be used as an official EU language or languages. This means that the EU citizens can use their own national languages when dealing with the EU institutions, just as they can when dealing with their national authorities at home. Similarly, all legislations adopted by the EU are directly accessible to each citizen in his or her own national language. However, dealing with such a huge language regime has exhausted the European Union in the sense of finance and efficiency. With the further enlargement of the Union, this problem will become even more critical.In this paper, by describing the situations and problems facing the EU language polices, the author aims to analyze the reasons behind these problems and the possibilities and limits of various solutions already brought up by the EU and other researchers. The author also tries to predict the future tendencies of the language development of the European Union based on the understanding of the current trends.Besides introduction and conclusion, there are four chapters;The introduction briefly generalizes the language policies and problems of the European Union and the basic structure of the thesis;Chapter 1 describes the multilingualism of the European Union. It also analyzes the reasons why the European Union holds multilingualism as the core of its language policies;Chapter 2 analyzes the problems of the EU language policies. First is the lack of principle. Second is the inefficiency of the work of the EU institutions;Chapter 3 brings out the proposals currently put up as the solutions to the EU language problems and analyzes respectively each one's feasibility and disadvantages;Chapter 4 emphasizes the development of the English language in the EU. By comparing and contrasting the model of world Englishes with the model of English in the European Union, we find that a new language - the EU English - is coming into being. It also analyzes the possibilities and difficulties of the EU English to become the lingua franca of the EU;The conclusion is the review and summary of the whole thesis. The appendix part of this thesis lists the main legislations and regulations that the EU language policies are based on.