John F Kennedy famously said “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”. I want to pose a similar but slightly larger question to all the bloggers here: “Ask not what the EU can do for your country, but what your country can do for the EU?”.
I know it’s not quite such a stirring patriotic question. Most people identify much more strongly with their native country than they do with the EU, and that is partly why National elections tend to be so much more hard fought, emotive, and generate a much higher turnout than European elections.
However the question was brought to my mind by Eamonn Fitzgerald’s diary in which he argued that the EU should adopt English as its lingua franca and do away with all that tiresome and expensive translation and interpretation of EU documents and discussions.
I find the economic argument Eamonn cites unconvincing, even in the current crisis. The costs of translation are minuscule compared to EU costs as a whole, and translation will have to continue for generations in any case until everyone has at least a working knowledge of English. Machine translations (e.g. Google) are improving all the time in any case, and to a degree all languages are converging as new words and technologies are invented.
Perhaps it can even be argued that, as English goes global, local dialects and variants of it diverge so much as to be come virtually distinct languages. Thus adopting English as a “Standard” doesn’t necessarily mean that different peoples won’t use and develop it very differently. The Queen’s Oxbridge English isn’t even widely spoken in the UK!
Then there are the cultural arguments, the literary and poetic heritage. Not so long ago education (in England) consisted mostly of Latin and ancient Greek! National identities usually involve an essential linguistic element - Israel virtually re-invented Hebrew when it became a Nation - virtually none of its immigrants spoke it on arrival. Imperialism has always used the suppression of native tongues as a method of forced incorporation, so the languages which become dominant can also be the languages of conquest and cultural genocide.
However I see nothing wrong with English becoming the de facto technocratic language for business and intergovernmental exchange - in many ways it already is - as Eamonn noted. But that doesn’t mean we have to suppress native languages especially if they are still the widely used in their native countries.
I have long argued that the extensive proportion of the curriculum time devoted to the Irish language (Gaelige) in Irish schools could be better devoted to modern European Languages (in which the Irish are notoriously bad) but that is a different argument. Irish is effectively a dead language in all except tiny areas of the country and no-one is fluent in Irish without also being fluent in English. So I don’t see a need to translate all official documents into Irish, but neither do I have a problem with Irish language enthusiasts seeking to sustain the language so long as it is not at the expense of other modern languages.
More often than not the argument that English should be adopted as the Lingua Franca is also made by the English as a way of getting one over the French (which used to be the almost universal language of diplomacy) and other major European nations. After all, more EU citizens probably have German as their mother tongue.
But perhaps there is more than an attempts at political and cultural one-up-man-ship and hegemony to the argument. Perhaps, in a truly integrated Union, we should seek to harmonise the best aspects of each society throughout Europe - the English language for business/government, the French Public Health provision model, German industrial/engineering standards, Italian style and fashion, oh - and I almost forgot - Irish Pubs!
Perhaps it would be an interesting challenge to bloggers here to ask them what aspect of their national culture/society/economy they think is the best in Europe and which they think should become the European norm if we were ever to decide we wanted to converge more as a social as well as an economic and political union?
Yes I know, diversity is good, and it would be terrible if we were all the same. But we can all learn from each other as well. So if you were asked to nominate one aspect of your country which you felt was the best in Europe - and which you felt could be profitably adopted as a European norm, what would it be?
(14 votes, average: 3.93 out of 5)
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Really interesting discussion. In my opinion, what Romania can bring to the table is the experience of a transition to democracy. The EU is doing a lot in its cooperation for development policy, but sometimes countries that are just entering the democratic world don’t need only cash, but they need the power of example, of “lived” good practices and all the rest.
A very good example. What aspects of the transition to democracy is being handled particularly well in Romania? Parliamentary representation, independent courts, free press, accountable government, effective opposition, good local community organisation and representation?
In terms of the total population of the EU English is spoken by 13% of the population as a mother tongue, and by 38% as a foreign language, or a total of 51%. The comparable figures for German are 18, 14 and 32%; French 12, 14 and 26%;Italian 13, 3 and 16%; Spanish 9, 6 and 15%; Polish 9,1 and 10%; Russian 1, 6 and 7%.
Good post! And I agree that it would be good to consider elements of different cultural and national backgrounds as a part of kind of European “bricolage”. At the same time, you’ve given us a difficult task :). I am thinking in which sense Slovenia might be advantegous or can contribute with. I will use a common perception of the state which especially relates to recent (transitional, still going on in weird directions) past. Over here social and economic gap inside of social strata was pretty small which means that in general and comparison with many other transitional states a quality of life was pretty high. That was a part of a pretty well led polics in the beginning of the transition which didn’t enable to establish such a huge gap between poor and rich, as in other countries. Also as a small country it was necessary to provide a kind of protectionism which did not allow to multinationals that would just enter to the market, buy the property and working force and leave when the conditions are not sufficent anymore (if I am correct this happpened in Hungary). However, both things are changing….
I would also say that at least on a public discourse level, EU legislation is always considered as stg that we have to accept-no matter if we might have already better standards…Can’t really go into details because I don’t know much about it (public discourse :)), but I am thinking that this so-called “unification” of standards can bring many good, but also bad outcomes. Maybe that’s just another paragraph for your post :D.
Thanks Tanja, for a very well considered post. Ireland, too, used to be a relatively equitable society without a huge gap between rich and poor - we were all relatively poor! - until the “Celtic Tiger” and globalisation enabled a huge expansion of wealth which benefited everybody but in a hugely disproportionate way creating a few billionaires, quite a few millionaires and a lot of people who were somewhat better off but who are suffering greatly now that the boom has turned to bust.
It would be interesting to compare what factors in our political cultures helped both Slovenia and Ireland to maintain such a relatively high level of cohesion and equity and what factors are threatening that now.
The question of the imposition of EU regulations regardless of their appropriateness for local conditions in a country is, I think, and important question, but an entirely different one to that which I posed in this post. I was looking for examples of what good things members states could bring to the EU as a whole, not what bad things the EU imposed on members!
There is a whole controversy about the EU imposing regulations on (for example) straight bananas (!), much of which is mythological and propagated by anti-EU Eurosceptic elements, but some of which is also undoubtedly true. Perhaps we should consider another post asking people to list those aspects of EU policies/regulations which they think have had negative effects on their countries. But lets see if we can get a list of positive opportunities for the EU first!
Irish really isn’t a dead language at all really, in fact there will be a massive rise in the amount of people fluent within 15 years I think but it is very very poorly thought outside gaelscoileanna.
I think the problem with other languages being spoken is that we start too late, like its mandatory to pick another language(besides english and irish) up in school(french being the biggest)
We should start in Irish schools learning French/German/Spanish in Primary school in my opinion
Interesting detailing of my idea… We naturally tend to complain on many of those aspects (after all, what nation is not critical of its government), but I believe we score best in democratic opposition (we had several alliances that succeeded as government party since 1989), free press (although, as in many other parts of Europe, media trusts are owned by so-called “media moguls”, i.e. very rick people whose interests are quite finely entangled with politics) and parliamentary representation. What lacks right now in Romania is not political mechanisms, but the will of the people to get involved in the life of their community and their country. The population is suffering from political apathy and fatigue, but democratic mechanisms are definitely in place - as a matter of fact one of the best anti-discrimination law is the Romanian one, but the National Council for Antidiscrimination does a lousy job at administering it (promoting it, educating the people, so on).
Hi Eireboy.
I appreciate that many Irish people have some competence in the language as it is a compulsory subject in School, but Wikipedia has this to say about native Irish speakers:
“Irish is the main community and household language of 3% of the Republic’s population (which was estimated at 4,422,100 in 2008). Estimates of fully native speakers range from under 20,000 up to 80,000 people. The Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs estimated in 2007 that about 17,000 people lived in strongly Irish-speaking communities, about 10,000 people lived in areas where there was substantial use of the language, and 17,000 people lived in “weak” Gaeltacht communities; Irish was no longer the main community language in the remaining parts of the official Gaeltacht.[7] However, since Irish is an obligatory subject in schools, many more are reasonably fluent second-language speakers. “