The European Commission yesterday ordered its staff to produce shorter documents and fewer of them because it faces such a backlog in translating the wise words of Brussels into the nine new languages of the enlarged European Union.
The backlog is already 60,000 pages and will climb to 300,000 pages within the next three years, unless something is done to reduce the EU's flood of prose, the Commission admitted yesterday. The entry of 10 new countries into the EU on May 1st increased the languages of the EU from 11 to 20.
Only the admission of Greek-speaking Cyprus, without the Turkish north of the island, did not add another language.
Announcing tighter controls, the Commission said priority had to be given to translating draft legislation and to state aid, anti-trust and merger decisions. Less important texts should be kept to less than 15 pages, it announced.
Priority would be given to letters to citizens, companies and other outside organisations. Documents for internal consumption would be given secondary importance, and if possible would be restricted to English or French. Where the Commissioners must make a decision, the text has to be translated into at least English, French and German and into the language of the relevant target audience.
The Commission admitted that it would fall short in its attempts to recruit 135 translators for each of the nine new languages. "We are facing problems in particular with the smaller countries - the Baltic states, Malta and Slovenia," a Commission spokesman said.