Book Review: What Place for Linguistic Diversity, Language Equality and Rights in the Language Arrangements of the European Union? Law and Language in the European Union. The Paradox of a Babel United in Diversity?
| Author | Álvaro de Elera |
| DOI | 10.1177/1023263X0501200305 |
| Published date | 01 September 2005 |
| Date | 01 September 2005 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
BOOK REVIEWS
WHAT PLACE FOR LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY, LANGUAGE EQUALITY AND
RIGHTS IN THE LANGUAGE ARRANGEMENTS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION?
Richard L. Creech, Law and Language in the European Union. The Paradox of a Babel
United in Diversity?, Europa Law Publishing, 2005, viii + 176 pp., hardback, s49,
ISBN 90-76871-43-4
INTRODUCTION
‘(W)e need to start from the outside and work back in – from a principled but meaningful
commitment to languages, to the reality of multi-state administration, informed but not
overwhelmed by either sentiment or efficiency. We need to set out the range of EU language
functions, and within these functions, the range of practices and, crucially, their effects.’
1
Language is a subject of growing importance for scholars writing on European Union
issues. In the last years many studies on the topic have been delivered from very different
perspectives. Linguists, sociologists, economists, political scientists and jurists alike have
worked on it, contributing to the formation of a whole body of works related to the
issue.
2
Likewise, works on other aspects of European integration have increasingly taken
into account linguistic dimensions.
3
As part of this trend, the concrete relations between
law and language in the European Union have also drawn enhanced attention in recent
times: the long-standing activity of Bruno De Witte has been complemented by the work
of other scholars such as Niamh Nic Shuibhne, who have added extremely valuable
contributions to the debate.
4
However, the scope of those relations is extremely wide and
doctrinal work on them is still recent. In the words of De Witte ‘This is not one of the
traditional fields of EU law literature with canonical concepts and classical doctrinal
12 MJ 3 (2005) 271
1
2
For some recent examples see R. Phillipson, English-only Europe?: challenging language policy, (Routledge,
2003); S. Wright, Community and Communication. The Role of Language in Nation State Building and
European Integration, (Clevedon, 2000); A. De Swaan, Words of the World, (Polity Press, 2001).
3
The linguistic implications are increasingly present in studies regarding institutional arrangements of the
Union. For example, see Von Bogdandy et al, ‘The legal framework for an autonomous European
Research Council’, 29 Eur. Law Rev. 788 (2004), in which the linguistic aspects of that framework are
considered.
4
See N. N. Shuibhne, EC law and minority language policy: culture, citizenship and fundamental rights,
(Kluwer, 2002).
272 12 MJ 3 (2005)
controversies ...’.
5
This means that the different doctrinal analyses face conceptual
difficulties and, in that sense, the diverse aspects of the relations between language and
law in the European Union have to be clearly differentiated in order to facilitate a bette r
understanding. Richard L. Creech’s Law and Language in the European Union is a very
valuable effort in advancing in this direction.
Creech’s work attempts to analyse the most important issues relating to language and
law in the EU in the light of the last two major events in the path of European integration:
the 2004 Enlargement and the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe.
6
The book
intends thus to provide an up-to-date and general overview, but in spite of its timeliness
two main events have occurred since its publication: the presentation by the Spanish
Government of a Memorandum containing a ‘Request for Official Recognition in the
European Union of All Languages with Official Status in Spain’
7
and the Opinion delivered
by AG Poiares Maduro in Case C-160/03,
8
both addressing the language regime of the
European Union. Both these ‘events’ highlight the fact that the issue of languages is a hot
and much-contested topic in Europe. This review essay will first consider Creech’s book in
order to assess it in relation to these two recent events, keeping as a guideline the point of
differentiation between the different aspects of the relation between law and language in
the European Union and paying special attention within them to the relationship between
linguistic diversity and the Union’s language arrangements; too often the first is presented
as the underpinning principle of the second. I will suggest that the basis of the Union’s
language arrangements has little to do with either linguistic diversity or language equality
and is rather to be found in the determination to protect fundamental rights.
§ 1. THE BOOK:
LAW AND LANGUAGE IN THE EUROPEAN
UNION
From its very subtitle, The Paradox of a Babel ‘United in Diversity’, Creech’s work makes
reference to a often-stressed fact: the tension or even contradiction in the EU between
diversity (referring in this case to the different languages present in the Union) and unity
(which would ideally correspond to a single language).
9
In the introduction, the author
Book Reviews
5
De Witte, ‘Language Law of the European Union: Protecting or Eroding Linguistic Diversity’, in R.
Craufurd Smith (ed.), Culture and European Union Law, (Oxford University Press, 2004), 205.
6
The final status of the Constitutional Treaty is, at the time of writing this article, more than dubious
following its rejection in the French and Dutch referenda.
7
Memorandum by the Spanish Government, released on the 13
th
December 2004, Council Document
16220/1/04, REV1(es).
8
delivered on 16th December 2004.
9
On the question of whether ‘Unity in Diversity’ is a true paradox or not, see Toggenburg, ‘‘‘United in
Diversity’’: Some thoughts on the new motto of the enlarged Union’, in II Mercator International
Symposium Europe 2004: A new framework for all languages?, available at http://www.ciemen.org/
mercator/pdf/simp-toggenburg.pdf.
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