Stay informed with free updates
Simply sign up to the EU trade myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.
EU attempts to fast-track trade deals by drafting them only in English have met fierce resistance from France and Italy, which are pushing back against the bloc’s growing anglicisation.
Trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič told member-state ministers last month that he would propose doing the preparation of a recent accord with Indonesia including the detailed “legal scrubbing” entirely in English, according to five people familiar with the matter.
The process normally takes up to two years because each change must be agreed and enacted in all 24 EU languages.
Šefčovič, a Slovak politician, has said he wants to cut the process to a year by using only English before translating the final treaty. He argued the delay holded back the European economy by postponing the benefits of trade deals.
“If you look at any assessment of how much money we are losing when this process takes a long time, I think that — especially in this volatile world — it is something we can no longer afford,” he told journalists earlier this year.
He cited the blockbuster deal with the Mercosur bloc in South America. The deal was finally signed in January. Each year’s delay to implementation costs the EU more than €50bn in lost GDP growth, according to a report by ECIPE, a think-tank.
He said there was “broad consensus” among member states for his approach.
“We support this. We want quicker access for our companies to market opportunities from trade deals,” said an EU diplomat. “It is a big priority of most member states.”
The bloc has signed five trade agreements in the last two years as it seeks to diversify its trade away from the US and China, which are trying to restrict imports.
However, the people said France and Italy had raised objections on constitutional grounds.
“This is a matter of the French constitution,” said a French official. “France cannot be bound by or commit itself to a text that is not drafted in French.”
The Italian constitution places similar restrictions, one official said.
The opponents of English-only trade deals also fear an erosion of the EU’s legal commitment to multilingualism, according to the people.
English, French and German are the languages used for most day-to-day work of the institutions.
But under the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, EU nationals have the right to use any of the 24 official languages to communicate with the EU institutions, and the institutions must reply in the same language.
Legal acts must be made available in all official EU languages and meetings of leaders and ministers are interpreted into them.
However, since the big expansion of the EU in 2004 the use of English has increased. In countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic more people speak it rather than French as their second language.
A Commission spokesperson said Brussels was “laser-focused on bringing our free trade agreements into force as quickly as possible” and adding that Šefčovič “has been very clear and consistent on this point”.
“It is standard practice in complex international negotiations to work in a single lingua franca during legal-technical review. This does not in any way prejudge or shortcut the full translation of the agreement into all 24 official EU languages, as required under EU law and in full respect of our institutional prerogatives and democratic scrutiny processes,” the spokesperson added.
