Finnish hosts refuse to budge.
Since handing over the EU presidency to Finland in July, Germany has been boycotting working meetings to protest the Finns' refusal to give the language of Goethe equal footing with French and English. But despite the snubs and setbacks in drafting such integration reforms, the Finns are holding fast to their belief that, when it comes to time-consuming translation, less is more. Some in the EU suspect that Germany's aim is to gain status more than illumination. Germany has made clear that it considers itself first among equals by virtue of having the biggest population in the alliance and spending the most to keep the group afloat. EU practices set out in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty designate only English and French as official languages to be used at all meetings.