Marcelo

The European Day of Languages

The European Day of Languages is 26 September, as proclaimed by the Council of Europe on 6 December 2001. Its aim is to encourage language learning across Europe. The general objectives of the European Day of Languages are to: * To call the public's attention on the importance of the learning of the languages and of your diversification (development of the multilingualism). * To sensitize the citizens for the existence and for the value of all the languages spoken in Europe. * To maintain and to favor the rich linguistic diversity of Europe. * To favor the learning of the languages along the life in order to answer to the transformations economics, social and cultural in Europe, contributing equally to the personal accomplishment.

The European Union, while organization, currently works in 20 official languages: German, Czech, Danish, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Greek, Hungarian, English, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Dutch, Pole, Portuguese and Swedish.

The number of official languages of the European Union is lower than the number of Member States (25) because Germany and Austria share the German, UK and Ireland use the same language, Greece and Cyprus speak Greek and Belgium and Luxembourg have common languages with their French neighbors, the Netherlands and Germany

However, the European Commission uses the day to day, only three working languages: English, French and German. The draft policy documents and legislation are developed in one or more of these languages. It is only in the final phase of the texts are translated into all 20 official