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Multilingualism is a fact of life in the European Union and one of the founding principles of the EU institutions.
Promoting language learning is central to the EU’s language policy. The EU encourages everyone to learn and speak more languages, in the interests of mutual understanding and communication. Its goal is an EU in which every citizen knows at least two foreign languages in addition to their mother tongue.
The Commission promotes the learning of a wide variety of languages — not just the official languages of the EU, but also the 60 or so regional and minority languages spoken in the EU and the numerous languages spoken by the large migrant communities living in Europe.
The European Union currently has 23 official languages. These are:
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As a democratic organisation, the EU has to communicate with its citizens in their own language. The same goes for national governments and civil services, businesses and other organisations all over the EU. Europeans have a right to know what is being done in their name. They must also be able to play an active part without having to learn other languages.
The EU institutions pass laws that apply directly to everyone in the EU. Everybody - individuals, organisations and the courts - must be able to understand them, which means they must be available in all official languages.
Using as many national languages as possible makes the EU and its institutions more open and effective.
Every time new members have joined the EU, they have added to the number of official languages.
| Official EU language since... | ||||||
| 1958 | 1973 | 1981 | 1986 | 1995 | 2004 | 2007 |
| Dutch French German Italian |
Danish English |
Greek | Portuguese Spanish |
Finnish Swedish |
Czech Estonian Hungarian Latvian Lithuanian Maltese Polish Slovak Slovene |
Bulgarian Irish Romanian |
In 1958, the then European Economic Community passed a Regulation naming Dutch, French, German and Italian as its official languages, these being the languages of the first six countries to join the organisation.
Since then, as more countries have become part of the EU, the number of official languages has increased. There are fewer official languages than member countries because some - e.g. Dutch, French, German, Greek - are widely spoken in more than one country.
• Check the Multilingualism website to learn more about EU language policy available here (new tab).
• If you want to hear and read a text in any of the 23 official EU languages click here (new tab)
• If you want to hear, read and learn 100 words in Bulgarian, English, Greek, French, Italian, Latvian, Romanian, Slovene and Spanish, click here (new tab).
• If you want to explore the main languages of Europe, download the “A field guide to the main languages of Europe” (PDF file)