On Saturday, 26 September, the European Commission published a statement declaring: “Today, we celebrate the richness of our many languages and cultures.”

It was possibly the most hypocritical statement made this year by an EU institution. Only two weeks earlier, that same European Commission had transmitted the EU–India trade agreement to member states in English alone. Rather than wait for legally reviewed translations into all 24 official EU languages, Brussels decided that national governments could begin considering the agreement using only the language in which it had been negotiated.

The stated reason was speed. The Commission insists that translations will still arrive later in the process, before the European Parliament votes, and that the final agreement will eventually be published in all 24 official languages.

So no, Brussels has not formally abolished multilingualism. It has simply decided that multilingualism can wait until later, once the important work has already begun. This does not put the axe through the neck of Europe’s linguistic diversity in one clean stroke. It does something more characteristically bureaucratic: it quietly relegates our languages to second-class status in the name of speed, efficiency and administrative convenience.

Open season has begun on Europe’s “lesser” languages.

So What Is Going On?

The European Commission concluded negotiations on a new trade agreement between the EU and India in January 2026. The Commission describes the combined market as the world’s largest free-trade zone, covering around two billion people and approximately one-quarter of global GDP.

The agreement has not yet entered into force. The Commission submitted proposals for its signature and conclusion to the Council in September. It must still be approved by the Council, signed, receive the consent of the European Parliament and then be formally concluded.

Ignoring, for the moment, the fact that globalist-inspired free trade has not exactly been a winning formula for every European worker, we can say: well, fine, whatever. Negotiating trade agreements is what the Commission is apparently there to do. Having finally completed negotiations with India, after also spending years pursuing the deeply controversial Mercosur agreement, Brussels wants to move quickly.

And Brussels does like moving quickly, particularly when national governments, parliaments or voters might otherwise slow it down. Until now, once an agreement had been negotiated and legally reviewed, the EU’s enormous translation apparatus would prepare authoritative versions in the Union’s official languages. The Dutch government could examine a Dutch text, the Czech government a Czech text, France a French text, Latvia a Latvian text, and so on.

This makes sense for two reasons. First, governments, parliamentarians, journalists and citizens should be able to read and debate significant agreements in their own languages. That is a basic condition of democratic scrutiny. Second, it gives practical meaning to the principle that all 24 official EU languages are equal. The EU’s motto is In varietate concordia: united in diversity. If that diversity disappears whenever it becomes administratively inconvenient, the motto is little more than branding.

Translation inevitably takes time. Complex legal texts cannot simply be pasted into an online translation tool and sent to 27 governments. Each version must accurately reproduce the same rights, duties and legal nuances. But that is precisely why the EU maintains one of the largest translation services in the world. Apparently, however, the institution responsible for that enormous translation service has now discovered that translation is inconvenient.

The Linguistically Standardised Eurosausage

The Commission’s answer is to begin the approval process in English and provide the other language versions later. European Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič argues that translating and legally reviewing agreements in every official language can delay their implementation for months or even years. In today’s competitive global economy, he says, Europe cannot afford to lose that time.

It sounds reasonable, until we consider what it means in practice. Member-state governments are expected to begin scrutinising a major international agreement in English. National officials can form positions, negotiations can advance and political momentum can build before authoritative texts are available in their own languages. Translations will follow afterwards, as a courtesy.

The message from Brussels is therefore quite simple: too bad if you want to understand everything immediately in Dutch, Czech, Polish, Portuguese or Slovak. The English version is available. Please try to keep up. In the classic, and still surprisingly relevant, British television comedy Yes, Minister, Jim Hacker complains that Brussels wants to introduce the “standardised Euro-sausage”.

Fast-forward several decades and that appears to be exactly what the Commission is producing: not merely a standardised sausage, but a linguistically standardised Eurosausage. One flavour fits all: EU English. Unfortunately, it is a flavour that tastes of nothing.

The Commission will say that this is only about speed and that the translations will eventually appear. But bureaucratic habits have a tendency to become institutional rules. Once governments become accustomed to beginning their work in English, the other language versions risk becoming secondary documents, produced after the real political conversation has already taken place. Multilingualism would still exist officially. It simply would no longer matter when it matters most.

Language Is Not an Administrative Inconvenience

The standardised Eurosausage leaves such a foul taste because multilingualism is not an ornamental feature of the European project. The EU is not supposed to be a single country with peripheral regional dialects. It is a union of nations, each possessing its own language, political culture, history and legal tradition. EU law recognises 24 official and working languages. Citizens have the right to communicate with the institutions in any of them and receive a reply in the same language.

In practice, of course, the institutions have never treated all languages equally. The Commission works internally largely in English, French and German, its three principal procedural languages. Anyone walking through the European institutions in Brussels will hear considerably less Dutch, Estonian, Portuguese or Slovene. English already dominates. The EU–India precedent pushes that informal dominance one step closer to becoming an official working reality.

This matters because language is inseparable from democratic accountability. Trade agreements contain technical provisions affecting national industries, workers, farmers, consumers and regulatory systems. The precise meaning of a sentence can produce significant economic and legal consequences. Elected representatives should not be expected to scrutinise such texts in a foreign language simply because the Commission has imposed an artificial deadline upon itself.

An eventual translation is not necessarily good enough. By the time it arrives, governments may already have taken preliminary positions. Negotiations may already have advanced. Officials may already have invested political capital in securing approval. The translation then becomes a record of a conversation rather than the basis upon which that conversation takes place.

The Commission’s own Directorate-General for Translation explains that the EU works in all 24 official languages so that its institutions remain accessible to citizens. Yet the Commission is now treating that same principle as a problem to be fast-forwarded through. Solidarity is supposedly one of the EU’s favourite words. But solidarity is slow. Democracy is slow. Respecting 24 languages is slow. That does not make any of them expendable.

At Least the French Are Complaining

The main reason we know so much about this decision is that the French did not like it. According to Euronews, Paris warned that beginning the approval process with an English-only agreement creates problems of transparency, legal precision and democratic understanding. France’s resistance is not entirely selfless.

French has long enjoyed privileged status as one of the Commission’s three main procedural languages. Paris was considerably less troubled when Dutch, Latvian or Slovene occupied the linguistic periphery. Now that the same sword of Damocles is hanging over the special position of French, the French government has suddenly rediscovered the sacred principle of linguistic equality.

A little hypocritical? Certainly. But France is still right. Whatever its motivation, Paris appears to be the most determined government willing to push back against the Commission’s attempt to make English the default language of the trade-agreement approval process.

Several other member states reportedly supported accelerating the procedure, while most governments have displayed little visible concern about the relegation of their own national languages. My own government appears to have quietly accepted the situation as a fait accompli. Has the Dutch cabinet even considered what this means for the status of Nederlands within the European Union?

If it has, it has done an excellent job of hiding its concern. The Dutch are clearly not alone. Across Europe, elected governments appear willing to let Brussels diminish their languages without even forcing a public debate.

One Language to Rule Them All

There we have the deeper problem. The European Commission increasingly behaves as though Europe can be hammered into a centrally organised federation through regulation, standardisation and American-style “scaling up”.

One market. One regulatory system. One political direction. And now, increasingly, one language in which the important work is expected to begin. One language to rule them all - and, in the darkness of the Brussels committee rooms, bind them.

But Europe is not the United States. It is not a young federation built around one dominant language and a relatively recent shared political identity. Europe is an ancient civilisation composed of distinct nations whose languages carry centuries of literature, law, faith, humour and memory. Those languages are not obstacles to European unity. They are the substance from which Europe is made.

The EU–India procedure will not immediately destroy Europe’s native tongues. The Dutch will continue speaking Dutch, the Portuguese will continue speaking Portuguese and the Slovaks will continue speaking Slovak. But the Commission has established a dangerous principle: that linguistic equality can be postponed whenever respecting it becomes inconvenient.

The EU–India agreement is the test case. If the experiment succeeds, why should the approach remain confined to this agreement, or even to trade policy? Can we really be surprised that Europeans increasingly vote for conservative parties promising to defend their languages, cultures and national sovereignty?

Brussels celebrates diversity in speeches while steadily reducing it in practice. It praises Europe’s languages on Saturday and treats them as obstacles on Monday. The Commission may regard this as efficiency. Many Europeans will recognise it as something else: another small surrender to the centralising globalist mindset that has alienated so much of the continent.

The question is therefore not merely whether the EU–India agreement will eventually be translated. The question is what kind of Europe remains when its native languages are permitted to speak only after the important decisions have already begun. After all, who in Europe still likes the taste of the culturally and linguistically standardised Eurosausage?