Voting on the choice of core languages in the European Union

Jan Fidrmuc, Victor A. Ginsburgh () and Shlomo Weber

European Journal of Political Economy, 2009, vol. 25, issue 1, pages 56-62

Abstract: Extensive multilingualism is one of the most important and fundamental principles of the European Union (EU). However, a large number of languages (currently 23) hinders communication and imposes substantial financial and legal costs. On the other hand, the reduction of the number of languages would disenfranchise some or many EU citizens. We use the results of a survey on languages and argue that even though a linguistic reform reducing the number of languages is unlikely to gain sufficient political support today, this may change in the future since young people are more proficient at speaking foreign languages.

Keywords: Languages; Disenfranchisement; European; Union; Linguistic; standardization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6V97 ... feb6ce55d058e0e01ff5
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Voting on the Choice of Core Languages in the European Union (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:poleco:v:25:y:2009:i:1:p:56-62

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Political Economy is edited by J. De Haan, A. L. Hillman and H. W. Ursprung

More articles in European Journal of Political Economy from Elsevier
Series data maintained by Heidi Boesdal ().