Multilingual Law and Judicial Interpretation in the EU

• Main Author: Tamara Ćapeta
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Zagreb, Faculty of Law 2009-12-01
• Series: Croatian Yearbook of European Law and Policy
• Subjects: european court of justice; multilingualism; interpretation of eu law; language comparison
• Online Access: https://www.cyelp.com/index.php/cyelp/article/view/88

The purpose of this article is to assess how multilingualism affects judicial interpretation of EU law. In the EU, the European Court of Justice is in the position of having the final say on what EU norms mean. Therefore, the article looks into the case law of that Court. It is well known that all official EU languages (23 of them at present) are authentic languages. Less known is what the related consequences are for interpretation in judicial proceedings. The first aim of the article is to find out what consequences the ECJ has drawn from this fact. Secondly, even though in some cases (eg CILFIT) the ECJ has postulated language comparison as a necessary step in construing the meaning of EU law, it is clear that such comparisons are not performed on a regular basis. Therefore, the article looks into when, on whose initiative, and for what purpose the Court performs a comparison of the same EU norm(s) expressed in different languages. The article then looks into what the Court does if discrepancies in different language versions are found, and concludes that such a problem is overcome by looking for the purpose of a legal norm. Finally, it is found that multilingualism does not significantly affect the manner and outcome of interpretation by the ECJ.