The Irish language (Gaeilge) is set to get official status in the EU on 1 January, bringing the total to 23.
The European Commission says Bulgarian and Romanian are expected to get official status on the same day, when the two Balkan countries join the EU.
According to Ireland’s 2002 census, 1.57 million of the four million population can speak Irish.
The commission says the EU will not have to translate all legislation into Irish, “mainly for practical reasons”.
The EU will have a team of 29 translators and editors to handle Irish, as well as 450 freelance interpreter days annually, costing some 3.5m euros (£2.3m; $4.6m).
1 response so far ↓
1 LJM // Dec 30, 2006 at 11:53 am
It would be surely better if we had no European union! But I agree that Irish becomes the official language and Catalan, Basque, Galacian, Lausitz Sorbian, Welsh and the others should join as next. Then we have a perfect chaos and everyone can see what a kind of nonsense the whole EU is!
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