A saving in any language

Date: 30/05/1996

European Parliament Secretary-General Enrico Vinci made a serious attempt to save some taxpayers money the other day, but was thwarted at the last minute by MEPs, determined to hold on to their language rights, literally at all costs.

Translating the Parliament's minutes into all 11 official EU languages sets the budget back by about 1.8 million ecu a year.

Vinci managed to persuade Spanish rapporteur Juan Manuel Fabra Vallés to slip a cunning sentence into his report on MEPs' income and expenses, simply stating that the Parliament “notes the wish of the bureau concerning the new procedure for the complete minutes”.

Insiders expert in reading the true message behind such opaque phrasing say that if it had been passed, the verbatim minutes of proceedings would in future only have been published in the original language.

For instance, interventions by Greek MEPs would be lodged in the archive only in Greek, and so on.

But Entre Nous can name MEPs Marianne Thyssen, Frode Kristoffersen and Efthymios Christodoulou as the sharp-eyed trio who uncovered the sneaky plot and persuaded a majority to force alterations in the Vallés report.

The recommendation has now been dropped - and that's official - in all languages.

The Irish language, incidentally, received an airing in EU circles last week thanks to the Economic and Social Committee (ESC).

Officials were instructed to issue information on a Dublin meeting between Irish Premier John Bruton and ESC President Carlos Ferrer in English, French and Irish. Maybe the fact that Ferrer is Catalan and a staunch supporter of Europe's lesser-used languages had something to do with it.