UNITY IN DIVERSITY. THE EUROPEAN UNION’S MULTILINGUALISM
RRSS 2016 No. 11 - Romanian Review of Social Sciences
-
Authors:
• Laura-Cristiana SPĂTARU-NEGURĂ -
Keywords: European Union, diversity, unity, multilingualism, languages
-
Abstract:
It is undeniable that the European Union represents the most ambitious legal and linguistic project, integrating 28 Member States and 24 official languages.
\r\nWhat we undertook with this study was to explore the importance of multilingualism in the European Union and the problems that unity in diversity involves. This study tried to touch upon both theoretical aspects (i.e., what the multilingualism of EU law implies) and practical issues (i.e., the interaction between legal languages at national and at EU level, problems emerging from multilingualism, illustrated by the relevant case law of the European Court of Justice).
\r\nIn many ECJ cases, it was underlined that multilingualism is essential to the EU legal order. The meaning of EU law cannot be derived from one version of the official languages and the ECJ regularly heads for a uniform interpretation of the contradictory versions.
\r\nThe present study is part of a more complex research on this theme and it is meant to approach certain important points of my PhD thesis. A first part of this research on multilingualism has already been published.