Availability of languages on European Commission web pages

Subject: Availability of languages on European Commission web pages

Cultural and linguistic diversity is a hallmark of the European Union, and the EU official languages are a major part of Europe’s cultural heritage.

I have received several complaints from Romanian citizens indicating that not all the content on the Commission’s websites is available in all 24 official EU languages, and more specifically in Romanian, and would like to know why it is there are still web pages that are not available in the official language of one’s choice.

Does the Commission not feel that as the information on its web pages is not being provided to the public in all the official EU languages, there is discrimination between European citizens and this lessens their trust in the European project?

Answer given by President von der Leyen on behalf of the European Commission (6 September 2022)

On its main website, the Commission provides political content and high-level information in all official EU languages. Practical information on European citizens’ rights and administrative and legal procedures is also provided on other websites in all official languages (1).

For other types of information, the Commission allocates its translation resources based on several factors. To ensure an efficient use of these resources, the Commission prioritises the translation of content that has a broad audience, is long-lived and is frequently viewed by visitors.

In order to further expand the multilingual coverage of its websites, the Commission increasingly uses its own machine translation service, eTranslation, to help visitors access content for which no human translation is available.

⋅1∙ See https://european-union.europa.eu, https://europa.eu/youreurope/ or https://e-justice.europa.eu/ | | ( | | )