REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE COUNCIL on the Union institutions’ progress towards the implementation of the gradual reduction of the Irish language derogation
Date: 2019-07-04
Institutions: Directorate-General for Translation, European Commission
Subjects: EU institution, Ireland, competition (EU), derogation from EU law, drafting of EU law, official language, operation of the Institutions, outsourcing, recruitment

EN 

  EN 

   EUROPEAN COMMISSION  Brussels, 4.7.2019  COM(2019) 318 final  REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE COUNCIL on the Union institutions’ progress towards the implementation of the gradual reduction of the Irish language derogation   
 
 
I. 

Introduction 

When it joined the European Communities in 1973, Ireland did not ask for Irish to be one of 
the institutions’ official and working languages, but only to have the Treaties translated into 
Irish  and  for  its  citizens  to  have  the  right  to  communicate  with  the  institutions  in  Irish. 
Consequently,  Irish  was  not  added  to  the  list  of  official  and  working  languages  in 
Regulation No 11 and the institutions did not draft or publish legislation in Irish. 

In  2005,  Ireland  requested  that  Irish  become  an  official  and  working  language  of  the 
Union,  proposing  a  restricted  regime  whereby  only  Regulations  adopted  jointly  by  the 
European  Parliament  (EP)  and  the  Council  would  be  drafted  in  Irish.  The  Council  granted 
that  status  from  1  January  2007  by  Regulation  (EC)  No  920/20052,  with  a  derogation 
stipulating that only  EP and Council Regulations had to  be drafted in Irish.  The derogation 
was adopted for 5 years and, following a review in 2010, extended for a further 5 years to 31 
December 20163. In 2015, as part of its policy of encouraging the use and knowledge of Irish, 
the Irish Government asked the Council to gradually reduce the scope of the derogation with 
a  view  to  phasing  it  out  by 1 January 2022.  Accordingly,  the  Council  adopted  Regulation 
(EU, Euratom) 2015/22644 in December 2015. This gave rise to an unprecedented situation in 
which the institutions had to build up a new language regime with an existing Member State. 

The  Annex  to  Regulation  (EU,  Euratom)  2015/2264  sets  out  a  timetable  for  gradually 
reducing the derogation, as follows: 

 
first increment (from 1 January 2017) – Directives of the EP and the Council; 
  second increment (from 1 January 2018) – Decisions of the EP and the Council; 
 

third  increment  (from  1 January 2020)  –  Council  Regulations  and  Directives,  and 
Council Decisions which do not specify to whom they are addressed; and 
fourth  increment  (from  1 January 2021)  –  Commission  Regulations  and  Directives, 
and Commission Decisions which do not specify to whom they are addressed. 

 

The Regulation requires the Commission to report twice to the Council on its implementation 
before  the  derogation  ceases  to  apply.  No  later  than  October  2019,  the  Commission  is  to 
report on the institutions’ progress on implementing the gradual reduction. After considering 
the report, the Council may decide to revise the timetable set out in the Annex.  

1   Council Regulation No 1 of 15 April 1958 determining the languages to be used by the European Economic 
Community  (OJ  17,  6.10.1958,  p.  385)  and  Council  Regulation  No  1  of  15  April  1958  determining  the 
languages to be used by the European Atomic Energy Community (OJ 17, 6.10.1958, p. 401). 

2   Council  Regulation  (EC)  No  920/2005  amending  Regulation  No  1  of  15  April  1958  determining  the 
language  to  be  used  by  the  European  Economic  Community  and  Regulation  No  1  of  15  April  1958 
determining the language to be used by the European Atomic Energy Community and introducing temporary 
derogation measures from those Regulations (OJ L 156, 18.6.2005, p. 3). 

3   Council Regulation (EU) No 1257/2010 extending the temporary derogation measures from Regulation No 1 
of  15  April  1958  determining  the  languages  to  be  used  by  the  European  Economic  Community  and 
Regulation  No 1  of  15  April  1958  determining  the  languages  to  be  used  by  the  European  Atomic  Energy 
Community introduced by Regulation (EC) No 920/2005 (OJ L 343, 29.12.2010, p. 5). 

4   Council Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2015/2264 extending and phasing out the temporary derogation measures 
from  Regulation  No 1 of 15  April  1958 determining  the  languages  to  be  used by  the European  Economic 
Community and Regulation No 1 of 15 April 1958 determining the languages to be used by the European 
Atomic Energy Community introduced by Regulation (EC) No 920/2005 (OJ L 322, 8.12.2015, p. 1). 

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The Commission is to report again, no later than June 2021, ‘on whether the institutions have 
sufficient  available  capacity,  relative  to  the  other  languages,  to  apply  Regulation  No 1 
determining the languages to be used by the European Economic Community, and Regulation 
No 1  determining  the  languages  to  be  used  by  the  European  Atomic  Energy  Community, 
without a derogation as of 1 January 2022’. In the absence of a Council Regulation providing 
otherwise, the derogation will cease to apply as from 1 January 2022.  

This  first  implementation  report  takes  stock  of  progress  between  January  2016  and 
mid-2019. 

II. 

Progress on implementing the gradual reduction of the derogation 

a. 

Cooperation with Ireland  

The  institutions  and  Ireland  have  been  working  together  to  implement  Regulation  (EU, 
Euratom) 2015/2264.  Under  Article  2  of  the  Regulation,  the  ‘Irish  authorities  and  the 
Commission,  in  collaboration  with  the  other  Union  institutions,  shall  meet  regularly  to 
monitor  the  recruitment  of  a  sufficient  number  of  Irish  language  personnel  by  the  Union 
institutions, in order to successfully handle the gradual reduction of the derogation (…), and 
to  monitor  the  capacity  and  use  of  external  service  providers  in  order  to  cater  for  the  Irish 
language requirements of the Union institutions’. 

Accordingly,  a  monitoring  group  on  the  Irish  language  derogation,  consisting  of 
representatives of the language services of the Union institutions and Ireland, was set up. The 
group  started  work  in  2016  and  will  continue  until  the  Regulation  ceases  to  apply.  It  has  a 
two-tier structure: 

  at  steering  level,  the  Commission  (represented  by  the  Directorate-General  for 
Translation),  in  collaboration  with  the  other  institutions  and  Ireland  (represented  by 
the  Department  of  Culture,  Heritage  and  the  Gaeltacht),  meet  annually  to  monitor 
progress and adopt annual priorities in the following areas:  

o  relevant recruitment to the institutions; 
o 
o 
o 

the capacity of external service providers; 
increased collaboration on language resources; and  
issues relating to the availability of the acquis; and  

  at  operational  level,  representatives  of  the  institutions’  language  services  and  the 
Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht meet at least twice a year, pursue 
work on the annual priorities and report to the steering level on progress.  

Since  the  adoption  of  the  Regulation,  the  Commission  and  Ireland  have  jointly  organised 
three annual conferences in Dublin on the Irish language.  

The state of progress in the main areas is outlined overleaf. 

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b.  Delivery of translation into Irish 

The  institutions’  demand  for  translation  is  composed  first  and  foremost  of  legislation,  and 
then  of  other,  non-legislative  documents  according  to  political  and  other  communication 
requirements. By delivering the first two increments in 2017 and 2018 (addition of Directives 
and  Decisions  adopted  by  the  EP  and  the  Council),  the  institutions  began  to  increase  the 
range  of  legislation  translated  into  Irish.  The  first  two  increments  were  implemented  in 
full.  

In line with recital 4 of Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2015/2264, the institutions also translated 
other content to increase the availability of information in Irish on the activities of the Union. 
With  the  regulatory  material  and  this  additional  content  combined,  the  institutions5  have 
more than doubled the volume of translation into Irish since 2016.  

To  prepare  to  deliver  the  next  incremental  increases  scheduled  for  2020  and  2021,  the 
Commission has analysed forecasts of demand by document type. The forecasts indicate that 
the 2020 and the 2021 increments may lead to up to a further doubling in volume for some 
institutions between end-2018 and 2021. Once the derogation expires in 2022, the remaining 
segment of demand (e.g. communications, consultations and reporting material) is estimated 
to  trigger  a  further  40%  increase  in  the  overall  demand  for  translation  into  Irish  in  the 
Commission6. As a result, demand for Irish in all other language services is also set to rise 
significantly.  

c. 

Recruitment of Irish-language staff  

The key component of capacity for implementing Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2015/2264 is a 
sufficient number of Irish-language staff. In 2015, the institutions and Ireland identified the 
main  challenge  that  would  be  posed  by  the  end  of  the  derogation:  the  small  pool  of  Irish-
language  experts.  To  build  up  production  capacity  by  1  January  2022,  the  institutions 
therefore planned a series of EPSO competitions for 2016, 2018 and 2020. 

An estimate was made of all institutions’ recruitment needs on the basis of the 2014 staffing 
figures7. A review of resources has been carried out since and adjustments are ongoing to the 
resources  mix  of  in-house  staff,  freelance  translation  capacity  and  language  technology 
resources. To deliver the increase in translation into Irish, it is essential to continue building 
up and combining, to different extents in the different institutions, these three main aspects of 
Irish language capacity. 

The institutions continue to allocate new posts to their Irish-language departments. Since the 
end of 2015, the number of in-house Irish-language staff has risen from 58 to 102. 

EPSO competitions for GA8 translators and linguistic assistants were launched in 2016. The 
translator competition attracted 210 applicants and yielded 10 successful candidates against a 

5   EU institutions with the biggest translation services, i.e. Commission, EP and Council. 
6     For the Commission alone, the increase was approx. 8,000 to 19,000 between 2016 and 2018, forecast to rise 
from 19,000 to approx. 50,000 between 2018 and 2021, and from 50,000 to approx. 83,000 as of 2022. 
7   Financial Statement prepared by the Commission for the adoption of Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2015/2264. 
8   GA is the ISO language code for Irish. 

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target of 62. Some 8 of 10 were already employed by the institutions9 on temporary contracts, 
so  the  net  gain  in  capacity  was  2.  For  the  linguistic  assistants  competition,  the  recruitment 
target  was  13;  9  out  of  118  applicants  succeeded,  of  whom  6  were  employed  by  the 
institutions10 on temporary contracts, giving a net gain in capacity of 3. 

A  lawyer-linguist  EPSO  competition  was  launched  in  2017.  It  attracted  26  applicants  and 
yielded 3 successful candidates.  

The  2018  translator  EPSO  competition  attracted  190  applicants  and  yielded  15  successful 
candidates.  To  maximise  the  chances  of  success  in  the  selection  procedure,  the  application 
deadline  was  extended  by  2  weeks  and  the  testing  sequence  was  changed  so  that  the 
translation tests came before the computer-based tests. 

EPSO  competitions  for  Irish  linguists  continue  to  attract  a  reasonable  level  of  interest,  but 
achieving success rates in line with projected needs remains a challenge. 

Table 1: 

EPSO competitions, 2016-2018 

Year 

Competition  Number of 
applicants 

Admitted to 
translation tests 

Invited to 
assessment centre 

EPSO reserve 
list 

Target 

2016  Translators 

Assistants 

2017  Lawyer-
linguists 

210 

118 

26 

43* 

8 

10 

28 

5 

2018  Translators  

190 

114** 

17*** 

10 

9 

3 

15 

62 

13 

8 

72 

*admission based on computer-based tests 
**admission based only on applications 
***computer-based tests integrated into assessment centre 

To  compensate  for  low  yields  from  EPSO  competitions,  the  institutions  have  also  invested 
intensively in recruiting and training temporary staff to build up translation capacity. As 
an alternative measure, they launched 14 selection procedures for temporary staff11 between 
2015  and  mid-2019.  The  additional  training  opportunities  created  by  Ireland  and  the 
institutions’  training  for  temporary  staff  have  provided  a  pragmatic  way  to  address  the  low 
success rate in the EPSO competitions. In addition, EPSO launched a selection procedure for 
contract agent translators in early 2019. 

While  the  derogation  does  not  refer  to  interpretation,  it  also  needs  to  be  factored  in,  as 
interpreters tend  to  form  part  of  the  same  pool  of  potential  recruits.  All  the  EU institutions 

9   Four in the EP, two in the Council and two in the Commission. 
10   2 in the EP, 3 in the Council and 1 in the Commission (Legal Service). 
11   EP: 1 for translators in 2016 and 2019 respectively, and 1 for assistants in 2017; 1 for lawyer-linguists in 
2017;  Council:  1  for  translators  in  2016,  2017  and  2018  respectively  and  1  for  assistants  in  2017;  1  for 
lawyer-linguists  in  2017;  Commission:  1  for  translators  in  2017;  2018  and  2019  respectively;  ECJ:  1  for 
Irish-language lawyer-linguists in 2017 and 1 for proofreaders in 2018. 

4 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                                            
have  to  attain  a  sufficient  number  of  interpreters  to  meet  demand  for  Irish  after  the 
derogation. They have been able to meet demand, which is limited to interpretation from Irish 
(‘passive  Irish’).  The  Commission’s  interpreting  service,  DG  SCIC  has  done  so  by  using 
three permanent staff interpreters (two with passive and one with active Irish) and a sufficient 
pool of accredited freelancers who can be called on to serve the Commission, the Council, the 
EESC and the CoR. Requests for interpretation from Irish in the four institutions served by 
DG SCIC decreased from 20 in 2011 to 4 in 2018 and to 2 so far in 2019. To date, DG SCIC 
has  not  been  asked  to  provide  interpretation  into  Irish  (‘active  Irish’),  a  fact  that  has  been 
explicitly recognised in an exchange of letters between DG SCIC and the Irish Government’s 
Department  of  Culture,  Heritage  and  the  Gaeltacht.  In  the  EP  (as  in  the  Irish  Parliament), 
interpretation  is  currently  provided  only  out  of,  but  not  into,  Irish  in  plenary  sessions 
(including  the  night  session)  and  for  other  meetings,  given  advance  notice.  The  European 
Court of Justice has no need for Irish-language staff interpreters, since no case has ever been 
brought to the Court in Irish.  

The  Publications  Office  (OP)  needs  Irish-language  capacity  at  assistant  level  to  carry  out 
language  editing  and  proofreading.  The  OP  currently  has  one  Irish-language  temporary 
agent and is seeking  to  build up Irish-language capacity gradually to  bring it into line with 
that of most other languages. Given the small number of posts and their specificity, it is not 
cost-effective to organise an EPSO competition for the OP alone.  

Ireland  has  also  made  considerable  efforts  to  prepare  candidates  for  careers  in  the 
institutions and boost recruitment. It has developed a series of university-level Irish courses 
and courses using Irish since 2007, notably in the framework of the Advanced Irish Language 
Skills Initiative. In 2015, it set up a Centre of Excellence for Careers with the Irish language 
in the European Union to facilitate coordination between the tertiary educational institutions 
taking part in the Initiative. Also in 2015, it set aside a budget of €4.7 million to establish 15 
new specialised courses in the participating institutions over a period of 8 years. All courses 
funded  under  the  Initiative,  including  law  courses,  now  provide  instruction  in  a  third  EU 
language  and  include  modules  on  psychometric  skills  to  prepare  students  for  the  EPSO 
competitions.  The  Commission  has  helped  to  set  up,  and  continues  to  support,  a  master’s 
course in Conference Interpreting at the National University of Ireland, Galway. 

Throughout  2016-2018,  careers  in  the  institutions  for  Irish  linguists  were  promoted  by 
Ireland and by the institutions themselves, through advertising campaigns, careers fairs, visits 
to  universities  and  visits  by  Irish  university  students  to  the  institutions,  dedicated  launch 
events, newspaper articles and radio interviews. The annual conferences in Dublin addressed 
topics  relating  to  Irish  translation  and  interpretation,  and  raised  awareness  of  the 
opportunities and the profiles of the Irish-language staff the institutions need. To extend the 
outreach  to  young  generations  of  Irish  speakers,  the  Commission  and  Ireland  launched  a 
special  Young  Translators  competition  for  Irish-speaking  secondary  school  pupils  (senior 
cycle) in 2017. In 2018, a total of 21 schools participated. 

In sum, despite a number of pragmatic, sui generis measures taken to boost Irish translation 
and  interpretation  capacity,  experience  to  date  indicates  that  considerable  efforts  are  still 
needed over the next 3 years to meet projected needs.  

5 

 
 
d. 

Capacity of external service providers 

The institutions outsource various proportions of their translation work. The Commission 
is the biggest user of outsourcing in terms of volume. The institutions expect to make more 
use of the Irish freelance market to complement their in-house capacity. 

The Commission and the EP organised additional calls for tenders for translation services 
in the reporting period to boost capacity and improve take-up and quality. The Commission’s 
new  contracts  came  into  force  in  July  2018.  Initial  results  are  encouraging,  though  the 
outsourced volume is still a fraction of what is needed to meet demand without a derogation. 
A  call  for  tenders  was  launched  in  November  2018  by  the  EP  with  the  participation  of  the 
Council,  the  Court  of  Auditors,  the  EESC  and  the  CoR.  In  March  2019,  the  EP  launched 
another  call  for  tenders  to  provide  freelance  translation,  including  Irish.  In  May  2019,  the 
Commission also published a new call for tenders to provide freelance translations, including 
Irish.  These  procedures  are  still  ongoing.  Awareness-raising  events  for  external  service 
providers  on  opportunities  for  working  with  the  Commission  were  organised  during  the 
reporting  period. To achieve maximum reach,  they included both  webinars and live events. 
Current and future needs for freelance translation were a focus of the 2018 annual conference 
in Dublin. 

Interpreting  services  at  the  Commission  (DG  SCIC),  the  EP  and  ECJ  have  access  to  11 
accredited  freelance  interpreters  from  Irish;  only  5  of  them  have  active  Irish. 
Accreditation tests did not yield any successful candidates in 2016, 2017 or 2019. 

In April 2019, the OP issued a call for tenders for external service providers; since no offers 
were received, the call for tenders will be re-launched. 

e. 

Irish-language resources 

Translation  capacity  also  comprises  language  resources.  The  institutions  and  Ireland 
continued the GA IATE12 terminology project, which is in its 11th year of operation and for 
which Ireland has approved funding until the end of 2021. The project has produced 65,592 
entries  (compared  with  56,860  entries  in  2015).  The  institutions  have  started  working  with 
Ireland to build a network of Irish-speaking domain terminology experts in Ireland. 

Computer-assisted translation tools and machine translation are crucial to the efficiency of 
the  translation  services.  They  are  fed  by  bi-  or  multi-lingual  corpora,  often  in  the  form  of 
the  interinstitutional 
translation  memories  based  on  previous  translations.  Euramis, 
translation memory bank, currently contains around 5.8 million segments from or into Irish 
(compared  with  3.5  million  in  2015).  This  is  around  a  tenth  of  the  30-50 million  segments 
held for most other language pairs. 

12   The terminology database used by all institutions, also partly available to the public. 

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Ireland  has  committed  to  providing  the  institutions  with  translation  memories  containing 
alignments of English and Irish texts from national legislation. An agreement was prepared 
between the institutions and Ireland; this is now awaiting finalisation. 

An  Irish  machine  translation  engine  based  on  neural  machine  translation  technology  was 
built in March 2018 as part of the Commission’s eTranslation system13 and is available to the 
institutions  as  well  as  to  the  Irish  authorities.  However,  since  machine  translation  is  data 
driven, and the data comes from Euramis, the comparably small amount of data used to train 
the Irish engines means the results for Irish machine translation are not as good as the results 
produced  for  other  languages.  The  European  Language  Resource  Coordination  initiative  is 
seeking to collect more language data to improve the engines. 

The OP has worked with the Irish Government and the Irish interinstitutional linguistic group 
to align the Interinstitutional Style Guide with the new official standard for Irish. The OP also 
has computer-assisted proofreading tools that are adapted for use with Irish language Official 
Journal texts. These are being extended to cover case-law in Irish. 

f. 

Issues relating to the availability of the acquis 

Irish is the first official and working language into which the body of EU law (the acquis) has 
not  been  previously  translated.  The  acquis  currently  contains  around  160,000  (Official 
Journal)  pages  of  legal  text  and  represents  an  important  part  of  the  institutions’  translation 
memories  and  a  rich  source  of  terminology.  To  address  the  lack  of  an  Irish  version,  the 
Commission’s Legal Service has drawn up a priority list of around 11,000 pages of basic acts 
and consolidated versions of acts of which translations into Irish would be of greatest value. 
The  institutions  are  jointly  translating  them  as  far  as  resources  permit;  to  date,  they  have 
translated  around  4,697  pages.  The  translations  are,  however,  not  authenticated  and  only 
serve  to  improve  the  translation  memories  and  to  aid  operational  efficiency.  The  ECJ  is 
translating case-law and text segments/phrases that recur frequently in its texts. 

To  contribute  to  the  institutions’  efforts,  as  of  September  2018  Ireland  is  funding  an 
internship programme for translating the acquis. A budget allocated until 2021 was adopted 
to fund 12 candidates a year to spend 5 months on placement in the translation services of the 
main institutions (two each in the EP, the Council and the Commission, twice a year). Only 
four of the expected six interns started in the first wave (two in the EP, one in the Council and 
one in the Commission) in September/October 2018, while three came in the second wave in 
March 2019 (two in the Commission and one in the Council). Ireland has agreed to include 
the EESC and the CoR in the programme and one intern started at the Joint Committees in 
March 2019. In April 2019, Ireland increased the grant14 to cover 10 interns in total to spend  
10  months  on  placement  starting  in  October  2019  (2  interns  for  the  Commission,  3  interns 
including 1 proofreader for the EP, 2 interns for the Council, 2 interns for the EESC and the 
CoR and 1 proofreader for the OP).  

13   eTranslation (previously MT@EC) provides machine translation for Commission DGs, but also for the other 

institutions and the Member States (public bodies). 

14   From €120,000 to €200,000.  

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III. 

Conclusions  

The institutions are fully committed to implementing Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2015/2264. 
Their cooperation with Ireland has facilitated progress in all areas set out in the Regulation. 
They have successfully implemented the first two incremental increases (covering Directives 
and  Decisions  adopted  by  the  EP  and  the  Council)  and  more  than  doubled  the  volume  of 
translation into Irish since 2016.  

To build up stable and sufficient in-house capacity, four EPSO competitions were organised 
over  the  reporting  period,  yielding  only  10  translators  and  9  assistants  in  2017,  and  15 
translators  and  3  lawyer-linguists  in  2019.  Since  the  end  of  2015,  the  institutions  have 
increased  the  number  of  in-house  Irish  language  staff  from  58  to  102.  Despite  this 
considerable and joined-up effort, progress is slower than expected due to the small pool of 
linguists  with  Irish  and  the  low  success  rate  in  the  EPSO  competitions.  Some  14  selection 
procedures for temporary staff were organised to compensate for the shortfall in candidates 
passing  the  EPSO  competitions,  offering  temporary  positions  during  which  staff  receive 
in-house training. 

To complement in-house capacity and extend the pool of external providers from which the 
institutions can draw, the Commission and the EP organised additional calls for tenders for 
freelance translation services in Irish, and freelance interpreter accreditation tests. 

Progress  was  made  in  building  up  Irish-language  technology  resources  and  a  new 
English-Irish neural machine translation engine was built as part of the eTranslation system, 
though  current  corpora  and  memories  remain  relatively  modest.  To  increase  available 
language data resources, an agreement was prepared between the institutions and Ireland on 
sharing  the  bilingual  corpora  of  Irish  national  law;  this  is  now  awaiting  finalisation.  The 
institutions and Ireland also continued work on the IATE terminology project. 

Forecasts  of  translation demand  indicate  that  delivering  the  2020  and  2021  increments  will 
require  substantially  more  capacity.  Overall  demand  without  a  derogation  from  Regulation 
No  1  covers  the  translation  not  only  of  legislation,  but  also  of  political,  communication, 
consultation  and  reporting  material.  Interpretation  needs  also  have  to  be  factored  in.  Major 
efforts  will  be  required  from  the  institutions,  working  in  synergy  with  Ireland,  to  build  up 
sufficient  capacity  to  meet  the  projected  needs.  A  review  of  resources has  been  carried  out 
since the needs were estimated in 2015; adjustments to the resources mix are ongoing and the 
precise staffing needs are under continuous review. To deliver the increase in translation into 
Irish, it is essential to continue building up and combining, to different extents in the different 
institutions,  all  three  main  aspects  of  capacity:  in-house  staff,  freelance  translation,  and 
language technology resources.   

The Commission will report again to the Council by June 2021 as to whether the institutions 
have  sufficient  capacity,  relative  to  the  other  official  languages,  to  apply  Regulation  No 1 
without a derogation from 1 January 2022. 

8