Parliament business faces translation ‘bottleneck’

By Martin Banks

Date: 02/06/05

MEPS have warned that the legislative work of the European Parliament could grind to a halt because of delays in translating reports.

Several reports have been withdrawn from Parliamentary plenary sessions, some at only 24 hours' notice, because they have not been translated into all the official 20 EU languages. MEPs are now putting pressure on the assembly's administration to tackle the problem.

A report on the re-insurance directive, which aims to create a single market in the re-insurance industry and which MEPs should have voted on last Thursday (26 May), was withdrawn the day before because of incomplete translation.

Its author, UK Socialist deputy Peter Skinner, is now pressing Parliament's services to put it on the agenda for the start of next week's Strasbourg plenary.

He said: "I was furious, particularly as it was pulled at such short notice. This is significant because we are on a tight deadline to get a first reading agreement and it is on the ECOFIN [the council of finance ministers] agenda for agreement on 7 June. If the Parliament hasn't voted on it by then, it will be delayed in the Council [of Ministers] too."

He added that Parliament's administration should start prioritising its translation work. "This is an important directive and there could now be a delay in it reaching the statute book."

UK Socialist MEP Claude Moraes said: "There is absolutely no excuse for what is happening and I don't think the issue is being treated seriously.

"We have known for a long time that the EU was expanding and that we would need more translators. So why hasn't more been done to address this?"

MEPs should have voted on a report drafted by Moraes during last week's plenary in Brussels but the document, on the protection of minorities in an enlarged EU, was withdrawn at short notice because it had not been translated.

He hopes it will be put on the agenda for another plenary in the near future but fears the delay may endanger its chances of being adopted.

"I'd spent some time constructing a political compromise but there is a possibility this may now unravel by the time Parliament gets to vote on it," he said.

Moraes said that committee work was also being adversely affected "because we're increasingly getting translated reports at such short notice we are unable to go though the amendments properly".

The MEP warned that an "enormous bottleneck" of work was likely to build up unless urgent action was taken. "Our legislative work could grind to a halt because of these inordinate delays," Moraes said.

His comments were echoed by French Socialist MEP Pervenche Berès, who raised the translation issue with the assembly's President, Josep Borrell, during last week's plenary. She said: "It is very frustrating. Parliament's legislative work is being disrupted."

Parliament's spokesman, José Liberato, said he was aware of the situation. "We are making enormous efforts to get all reports translated on time and recruit more translators," he said.

The European Commission, the Council and the Parliament are still running recruitment campaigns after failing to hire enough translators to cope with the nine new languages. Recruitment of Slovenian, Latvian and Lithuanian translators has proved particularly slow.

Article reports that Members of the European Parliament warned that the assembly's legislative work could come to a halt because of delays in translating reports.