20 August 2008

Foreign And Commonwealth Office

E1 122, King Charles Street

London SW1A 2AH

Your reference:

Our reference:

Dr Kaihsu Tai

By email.

Dear Dr Tai,

Thank you for your email of 23 July regarding languages in the European Union. I am replying as the responsible Desk Officer.

The official languages of the European Union were originally stipulated in EEC Council Regulation No 1/1958 determining the languages to be used by the European Economic Community. They are those “whose status is recognised by the Constitution of a Member State in all or part of its territory or the use of which as a national language is authorised by law”.

The European Union currently has 27 Member States and 23 official languages. Each Member State, when it joins the Union, stipulates which language or languages it wishes to have declared official languages of the EU. The agreement on this matter is then recorded in the Act of Accession.

There is now also provision for the limited recognition by the EU of languages other than the official languages. On 13 June 2005, the Council authorised the limited use at EU level of languages recognised by Member States other than the official working languages and granted recognition to "languages other than the languages referred to in Council Regulation No 1/1958 whose status is recognised by the Constitution of a Member State on all or part of its territory or the use of which as a national language is authorised by law”. The official use of such languages is authorised on the basis of an administrative arrangement concluded between the Council and the requesting Member State.

Such an administrative arrangement was recently agreed between the UK and the Council (published in the Official Journal C 194, 31/07/2008 P. 0007 - 0008) permitting “the official use at the Council of the languages other than those referred to in Regulation No 1/1958 and whose status is recognised, in the United Kingdom's constitutional system, by Acts of Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and/or legislative acts of the appropriate legislative body”. On this basis, the Government has reached agreement with the Welsh Assembly Government on the limited use of Welsh at EU level, and expects to reach shortly a similar agreement with the Scottish Executive on the limited use of Scottish Gaelic. Spain has also taken advantage of these provisions for its regional languages.

I hope you find this reply helpful.

Yours sincerely,

EU Institutions Team

Europe Delivery Group

1

Foreign &

Commonwealth

Office