WRITTEN QUESTION E-2425/98

by Concepció Ferrer (PPE) to the Commission

(30 July 1998)

Subject: Languages used by the Commission for the purposes of the Internet

A number of requirements must be met by those wishing to use the Internet. Apart from purely material ones, such as having a computer and being connected to the system, a knowledge of English is also called for since that is the language in which most of the information available on the network is presented.

All the EU institutions have servers connected to the network which provide a major service to the general public. In most cases, however, only those who know English are able to take advantage of the service since English is the most widely used language on the various institutions' servers, in particular the Commission's directorates-general.

Does the Commission not believe that it should be possible for the Internet pages of the various Community bodies to be read in the various official languages of the EU, or at least in French, as is the case at the European Parliament, for example?

Answer given by Mr Oreja on behalf of the Commission

(15 September 1998)

Although English remains worldwide the single most spoken language on the web, it is now second to the preference for users own native language. According to various recent surveys, non-natives English speakers account today for less than half of the global on-line population (55 millions). In Europe, it is reckoned that more than 4 % of the population is on-line and that non-native English speakers represent now an overwhelming majority of the total.

The interinstitutional web-site Europa, coordinated by the Commission, has anticipated the linguistic realities of the web and is today a genuine multilingual server, offering a very large percentage of its contents in each of the eleven official languages. A survey carried out early 1998 among more than 5 000 Europa users shows that almost 70 % of them consider the present multilingual development of Europa as satisfactory and that only 10 % are still unsatisfied. A high degree of satisfaction is similarly expressed for other measures such as quality of navigation, content, presentation and interactivity.

Improvements are still possible. As a matter of fact, if most documents on Europa are by now systematically offered in 11 languages, not all of the home pages,index, and presentation pages are presented in more than one language.

The Commission, for its part, is making a major effort to improve this situation, taking into account the targeted audiences of each site.

The sites most relevant for the general public are (or will be soon) totally or almost totally available in 11 languages. This is notably the case for the euro site, the site dedicated to citizens rights within the single market, EUR-Lex, press releases of the Spokeman's service, Office for official publication, career opportunities, DG VI, DG X, DG XII, DG XVI, DG XXIV, as well as the Secretariat general and the legal, translation and Conference services.

Other sites particularly relevant for wide professional use (DG IV, DG V, DG XII, DG XV) offer full trilingual navigation tools and texts, plus documents in eleven languages. Eurostat also offers a complete trilingual approach. Other sites of more recent creation belonging to this category (DG II, DG VII, DG XI, DG V, DG XVII, DG XXII, DG XIII and DG XXIV) offer documents in several or all official languages, but have still to develop a more multilingual presentation of their contents.

Finally, the sites managed by the DGs dealing with external relations vary according to their audiences. DG VIII is bilingual (French and English), DG I offers documents in three languages (Spanish, French and English), ECHO uses four (English, Spanish, French and Portuguese) and DG I and DG IA are mainly English based. However, basic documents related to enlargement are available in the eleven official languages of the Union and in the languages of the candidate countries, and documents concerning the instruments of commercial policy are offered in three languages (English, French and German).

It must also be realized that some particularly volatile pages such as "what's new" or last minute presentations can only be managed in one single language, understandable by the greater number.

Maintaining a fully or partially multilingual server requires considerable resources which are not necessarily available to the extent needed. However, the Commission is convinced that all the institutions present under Europa will continue to increase the efforts aiming at satisfying the needs expressed by their actual and potential users.