REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE COUNCIL on whether the Union institutions have sufficient available capacity for the Irish language, relative to the other official EU languages, to apply Regulation No 1 without a derogation as of 1 January 2022
Date: 2021-06-21
Institutions: Directorate-General for Translation, European Commission
Subjects: Ireland, derogation from EU law, drafting of EU law, information profession, interpreting, linguistics, official language, operation of the Institutions, terminology, translation

EN 

  EN 

   EUROPEAN COMMISSION  Brussels, 21.6.2021  COM(2021) 315 final  REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE COUNCIL on whether the Union institutions have sufficient available capacity for the Irish language, relative to the other official EU languages, to apply Regulation No 1 without a derogation as of 1 January 2022           
 
 
I. 

Introduction 

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

the  European  Union  (EU).  The  Council  granted 

In  2005,  Ireland  requested  that  Irish  become  an  official  and  working  language  of  the 
that  status  from 
institutions  of 
1 January 2007  by  Regulation  (EC)  No  920/20052.  This  included  a  temporary  derogation 
from Regulation No 1, with the effect that for five years, the obligation to draft and to publish 
legislative  acts  in  the  Irish  language  applied  only  to  Regulations  adopted  jointly  by  the 
European  Parliament  and  the  Council.  Following  a  review  in  2010,  the  derogation  was 
extended  for  a  further  five  years  to  31 December 20163.  In  2015,  as  part  of  its  policy  to 
encourage the use and knowledge of  Irish, the Government  of  Ireland 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  (‘the  Regulation’) 
in  December 2015. This gave rise to  a  sui  generis  endeavour in  an  unprecedented situation 
for the EU institutions to build up a new language regime with an existing Member State. 

The Annex to the Regulation sets out a timetable for gradually reducing the scope of the 
derogation to include translation into Irish of the following categories of acts: 

  Directives of the Parliament and Council – no later than 1 January 2017; 
  Decisions of the Parliament and Council – no later than 1 January 2018;  
  Council Regulations and Directives, and Council Decisions5 which do not specify to 

whom they are addressed – no later than 1 January 2020; and 

  Commission  Regulations  and  Directives,  and  Commission  Decisions  which  do  not 

specify to whom they are addressed – no later than 1 January 2021. 

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). 

5   Council  decisions  on  signature  and/or  closure  of  international  agreements  are  translated  into  Irish.  The 

agreements as such, annexed to such decisions, will be published in Irish only from 1 January 2022.  

 
 
 
                                                           
The Regulation requires the Commission to report twice to the Council on its implementation 
before  the  derogation  ceases  to  apply.  The  Commission  adopted  the  first  report6  on 
4 July 2019. This second one reports on the progress between January 2016 and April 2021 
(Section II) and, as stipulated in Article 3 of the Regulation, on whether the EU institutions 
have sufficient available capacity, relative to the other official languages, to apply Regulation 
No 1  without  a  derogation  as  of 1 January 2022  (Section  III).  In  the  absence  of  a  Council 
Regulation  providing otherwise, the derogation  will cease to  apply  as from  1 January  2022 
and  all  legal  acts  will  be  published  in  Irish  in  the  Official  Journal  simultaneously  with  all 
other official languages of the EU institutions. 

II. 

Progress on implementing the gradual reduction of the derogation 

a. 

Cooperation with Ireland  

The  EU  institutions7  and  Ireland  have  worked  together  to  implement  the  Regulation,  as 
achieving  this  objective  is  a  shared  responsibility.  Both  parties  have  carried  out  important 
work,  jointly  and  separately,  by  taking  unprecedented  measures.  From  the  outset,  the  EU 
institutions  appreciated  a  number  of  initiatives  adopted  by  Ireland  under  their  20-year 
Strategy for the Irish Language 2010-20308 to increase the use and knowledge of Irish. The 
EU  institutions  joined  Ireland  in  this  effort  and  took  innovative  measures  to  boost  Irish-
language  capacity  and  to  increase  the  availability  of  documents  and  language  resources  in 
Irish, thus enriching the whole ecosystem of the Irish language. 

A monitoring group on the Irish language derogation9, consisting of representatives of the 
language services of the EU institutions and Ireland, was set up to monitor progress and adopt 
annual priorities in the following areas: 

o  recruitment to the EU institutions; 
o 
o 
o 

the capacity of external service providers; 
increased cooperation on language resources; and  
issues relating to the availability of the body of EU law (acquis).  

The  group  started  working  in  2016  and  will  continue  until  the  Regulation  ceases  to  apply. 
Cooperation  will  continue  beyond  2021  in  a  different  format,  taking  into  account  the 
particularities of the Irish language situation.  

The  state  of  progress  over  the  last  five  years  in  these  four  areas  is  outlined  in  the  next 
sections. 

6   Report from the Commission to the Council on the Union institutions’ progress towards the implementation 

of the gradual reduction of the Irish language derogation (COM/2019/318 final, 4.7.2019).  

7   For the purposes of this report, ‘EU institutions’ includes also the Committee of the Regions, the European 
Economic and Social Committee, the European Investment Bank and the Translation Centre for the Bodies 
of the EU. 

8   https://www.gov.ie/en/organisation-information/cb582-20-year-strategy-for-the-irish-language-2010-2030/  
9   The structure of the monitoring group is described in the report referred to in footnote 6.  

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b.  Delivery of translation into Irish 

The  EU  institutions’  demand  for  translation  is  composed  of  legislation,  case  law  and  other 
types  of  documents,  according  to  political  and  other  communication  requirements.  The 
institutions meet the demand for Irish translation, as for other official languages, by using a 
mix  of  resources,  combining  permanent  and  temporary  in-house  staff,  outsourcing  and 
language  technology  resources.  Thorough  risk  assessments  are  carried  out  when  managing 
workflow  to  ensure  resources  are  allocated  properly.  Priority  is  given  to  the  translation  of 
legislation to ensure a seamless legislative process, and then to other types of documents. 

Having delivered the first three incremental increases and having begun to deliver the fourth 
increment  in  2021,  the  EU  institutions  have  been  successfully  handling  the  gradual 
reduction  of  the  derogation,  whilst  protecting  the  seamlessness  of  the  multilingual 
legislative process.  In line with  Recital  (4) of the Regulation,  the  EU institutions  have also 
increased  the  volume  of  information  available  in  Irish  on  the  EU’s  activities  by  translating 
other types of documents. This amounts to an effective tripling of the volume of translation 
into Irish since 2016. 

The most substantial increase is the 2021 increment, which only affects the Commission. It is 
expected  to  generate  an  increase  of  around  70%  in  the  volume  of  translation  into  Irish  of 
legislation in the Commission. By the end of 2021, the institutions prepare for meeting all 
demand for translation of legislation into Irish. 

In this context, it should be noted that as of 1 January 2022, international agreements should 
be published in Irish. Having regard to the considerable length of such documents, this will 
imply a significant additional workload for the institutions, both in relation to new proposals 
for  international  agreements  as  well  as  to  the  agreements  for  which  the  Commission  has 
already  made  or  will  make  during  the  year  2021  a  proposal  for  a  Council  decision  on  the 
signature and the conclusion.  

The EU institutions are also preparing for an increase in demand for translation into Irish of 
other types of documents, notably information on the activities of the EU. This affects the 
Commission in particular, which estimates that the additional demand to translate other types 
of documents may lead to a doubling of the overall volume of translation into Irish, and the 
Parliament,  which  also  anticipates  a  tangible  increase.  For  these  types  of  documents,  the 
Commission will use a flexible system to prioritise translation needs. 

c. 

Recruitment of Irish-language staff  

A  key  component  of  capacity  to  implement  the  Regulation  is  a  sufficient  number  of  Irish-
language  staff10  relative  to  the  other  official  languages.  In  2015,  the  EU  institutions  and 
Ireland identified the main challenge:  the small pool  of  Irish-language experts. An estimate 

10   Translators, assistants, lawyer-linguists, interpreters, proofreaders, managers. 

3 

 
 
 
 
 
 
                                                           
was  made  of  all  the  EU  institutions’  recruitment  needs  on  the  basis  of  the  2014  staffing 
figures11.  However,  since  2015,  cuts  have  been  made  to  the  staffing  levels  of  all  language 
teams  necessitating  a  review  of  resources  and  adjustments  to  the  mix  of  in-house  staff, 
outsourcing and language technology resources. Though in most of the institutions the pace 
of  recruitment  slowed  in  2020  due  to  the  COVID-19  pandemic,  the  number  of  in-house 
Irish-language staff has risen from 58 in 2016 to 138 in April 2021 (see Table 1).  

Overview of progress in recruiting Irish translation staff 

To  build  up  a  stable  in-house  translation  capacity  in  Irish,  the  EU  institutions  organised  a 
series of EPSO12 competitions in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2021 for permanent positions for 
translators,  lawyer-linguists  and  assistants.  The  competitions  attracted  a  relatively  high 
number of applicants but they yielded only 10 successful translators and 9 assistants in 2017, 
and 15 translators and 3 lawyer-linguists in 2019. EPSO competitions for lawyer-linguists for 
the  Commission,  the  Council  and  Parliament  and  another  for  proofreaders/language  editors 
for the Parliament and the Court of Justice are ongoing.  

In parallel, the EU institutions took special measures and invested intensively in  recruiting 
and training temporary staff to build up capacity. Since 2016, they launched 42 selection 
procedures  for temporary  staff. To respond to  the interest  of the local  pool  of linguists, the 
EPSO  selection  procedure  for  temporary  agent  translators  organised  by  the  Commission  in 
February  2020  includes  the  option  to  be  recruited  in  Ireland  (Grange,  County  Meath).  It 
yielded 50 translators, with around 20 due to be recruited to the Commission in the second 
half of 2021. The other EU institutions envisage recruiting another 40 staff through ongoing 
EPSO  competitions  and  further  temporary  selection  procedures.  Altogether,  the  institutions 
intend to recruit some 60 additional staff by the end of 2021,  making the staffing level in 
the Irish language teams comparable to that of most other official languages. 

These  measures  have  increased  the  in-house  capacity  of  the  EU  institutions  to  provide 
services in Irish. However, there is a high share of temporary to permanent staff: 56% across 
the  EU  institutions  (e.g.  60%  temporary  staff  in  the  Commission’s  translation  service  and 
100% in the Court of Justice). The EU institutions are taking measures to increase the share 
of permanent translators and lawyer-linguists. Parliament finalised an internal competition for 
permanent staff in 2021; the Court of Justice launched one in 2020 and the Council will run 
another in 2021. 

Interpretation and proofreading 

Although the derogation does not refer to interpretation, the needs of this language service 
also  need  to  be  factored  in,  as  interpreters  tend  to  form  part  of  the  same  pool  of  potential 
recruits for translation for several EU institutions. The EU institutions have so far been able 
to meet demand for interpretation into Irish. DG Interpretation of the European Commission 

11   Financial statement prepared by the Commission for the adoption of Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2015/2264. 
12    European Personnel Selection Office. 

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serving four EU institutions13, has two permanent staff interpreters and four temporary staff 
and  will  request  an  internal  competition  for  Irish-language  interpreters.  Requests  for 
interpretation from Irish (‘passive Irish’) from DG Interpretation increased from one in 2016 
to  eight  in  2020.  Since  2016,  DG  Interpretation  was  asked  once  in  2019  to  provide 
interpretation into Irish (‘active Irish’). The Commission has helped set up and continues to 
support  a  master’s  course  in  conference  interpreting  at  the  National  University  of  Ireland, 
Galway.  In  the  European  Parliament  (just  as  in  the  Irish  Parliament),  interpretation  is 
provided only out of, but not into, Irish in plenary sessions (including the night session) and 
for other meetings, subject to advance notice.  

The  Publications  Office  of  the  EU  needs  Irish-language  assistants  to  carry  out  language 
editing  and  proofreading.  It  currently  has  two  Irish-language  temporary  agents  and  is 
seeking  to  build  up  Irish-language  capacity  gradually  to  bring  it  into  line  with  the  staffing 
levels of most other official language teams.  

Table 1: 

Irish-language staffing levels in the EU institutions 2016 – 2021  

2016 

2017 

2018 

2019 

2020 

2021 April   Forecast  by 
the  end  of 
2021 

Staff  

58 

80 

101 

123 

138 

138 

+/- 200 

of 

57% 

45% 

56% 

53% 

60% 

56% 

[N/A] 

Share 
temporary 
staff 

Awareness raising  

Since  2016,  the  EU  institutions  and  Ireland  have  promoted  careers  in  the  EU  institutions 
for  Irish  linguists,  including  through  five  annual  conferences  on  Irish  translation  and 
interpretation and conferences promoting careers for lawyer-linguists. To extend the outreach 
to  younger  Irish  speakers,  the  Commission  and  Ireland  have  organised  an  annual  Young 
Translators competition for Irish-speaking secondary school pupils since 2017, with  Ireland 
sponsoring the prizes. Participation in this competition has increased from 26 schools in 2017 
to  34  schools  in  2020.  Since  2017,  Ireland  has  funded  a  roadshow  to  highlight  job 
opportunities  in  Irish,  especially  EU  careers.  A  new  EU  Jobs  Strategy  for  Ireland  is  also 
being developed to promote careers in the EU and to increase the number of Irish-language 
staff  working  in  the  EU  institutions.  Due  to  the  COVID-19  pandemic,  many  of  the  events 
planned  for  2020,  such  as  the  annual  conference  co-organised  by  Ireland  and  the 
Commission,  were  run  online.  Ireland  has  also  made  considerable  efforts  to  prepare 
candidates  for  careers  in  the  EU  institutions  and  boost  recruitment.  Since  2007,  it  has 

13   It serves the European Commission, the Council, the Committee of the Regions and the European Economic 

and the Social Committee. 

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developed  a  series  of  university-level  courses  delivered  either  entirely  through  Irish  or 
comprising elements in Irish, notably under the Advanced Irish Language Skills Initiative14. 

In summary, although the pace of recruitment in most institutions slowed in 2020 due to the 
pandemic, Irish-language teams in the institutions have been set up with the same structure as 
for  other  official  language  teams.  Recruitment  continues  in  2021,  making  the  staffing  level 
for  Irish-language  teams  comparable  to  most  other  official  language  teams.  To  address  the 
high ratio of temporary to permanent staff, it is a priority for the EU institutions to organise 
further EPSO competitions and/or internal competitions to recruit permanent staff in order to 
ensure business continuity and a sustainable service. 

d. 

Capacity of external service providers 

Translation 

The EU institutions outsource various proportions of their translation work into Irish, as 
they do for other languages. The Commission outsources the highest volume, followed by the 
Translation  Centre  and  Parliament.  The  European  Court  of  Auditors,  the  European  Central 
Bank  and  the  European  Investment  Bank  rely  entirely  on  outsourcing,  although  for 
significantly lower volumes. Since 2016, the volume outsourced has quadrupled.  

The  Commission  and  Parliament  organised  new  calls  for  tenders  for  translation  over  the 
reporting period to boost capacity and improve take-up and quality. The Commission’s latest 
outsourcing system with one main contractor came into force in July 2020. Initial results are 
encouraging  and  the  Commission  has  since  increased  the  volume  of  outsourced  work.  The 
Parliament launched a joint call for tenders in November 2018 with the Council, the Court of 
Auditors, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. 
In early 2020, the Parliament began working with  new contracts  for outsourced translation, 
including  into  Irish.  The  Council  began  outsourcing  Irish  for  the  first  time  in  2020.  The 
Committees  have  not  outsourced  any  translation  work  so  far.  Overall,  the  quality  of 
outsourced  translations  into  Irish  is  good.  More  capacity  in  the  outsourcing  sector  may  be 
needed since the EU institutions expect an increase in demand. 

In Ireland, the most recent examination for accrediting translators and editors took place in 
December  2020.  This  yielded  10  successful  candidates,  bringing  the  total  number  of 
accredited translators to 211 and the total number of accredited editors to 8.  

Interpretation and proofreading 

The  three  EU  interpretation  services,  DG  Interpretation  of  the  Commission,  DG  LINC15  of 
the  Parliament  and  the  Directorate  for  Interpretation  of  the  Court  of  Justice,  have  14 
accredited freelance interpreters on their joint list who work from Irish, of these only 6 

14   For further details on the Advanced Irish Language Skills Initiative, see the report referred to in footnote 6. 
15   Directorate-General for Logistics and Interpretation for Conferences. 

6 

 
 
                                                           
are  accredited  to  interpret  into  Irish.  Accreditation  tests  did  not  yield  any  successful 
candidates in 2016, 2017, 2019 or 2020.  

The Publications Office concluded a tender for proofreading general publications in March 
2020 for four years. The new contract for case law includes proofreading Irish jurisprudence, 
which could be fully outsourced from 2023. Proofreading of the Official Journal C series has 
been partially outsourced since October 2020 with a contract for legal publications. Official 
Journal L series is proofread in-house. 

Awareness raising 

A series of awareness-raising events for external service providers on opportunities to work 
with  the institutions were organised over the reporting period. To  achieve maximum  reach, 
they included both online and face-to-face events. Current and future outsourcing needs were 
a focus of the 2018 conference co-organised by the Commission and Ireland in Dublin.  

e. 

Irish-language resources 

Translation  capacity  also  comprises  language  resources,  such  as  terminology  databases  and 
computer-assisted  translation  tools.  The  EU  institutions  and  Ireland  continued  the  Irish 
IATE16 terminology project, which is in its 14th year of operation and funded by Ireland until 
the end of 2021. The project has produced 70 266 entries so far (up from 56 860 entries in 
2015). In 2016, the EU institutions started working with Ireland to build a network of Irish-
speaking  domain terminology experts in  Ireland. The project  is  to  be funded by  Ireland for 
another  year and Ireland has committed to bring in more experts with  Irish-language skills. 
The  Concise  English-Irish  Dictionary,  a  print  version  of  the  online  New  English-Irish 
Dictionary17 was published in December 2020, the first major English-Irish dictionary since 
1959. 

Computer-assisted  translation  tools  and  machine  translation  are  crucial  to  efficiency. 
They are fed by bi- or multilingual corpora, often in the form of translation memories based 
on previous translations. Euramis, the interinstitutional translation memory bank, currently 
contains some 9 million segments from or into Irish (from 3.5 million in 2015). 

As  part  of  the  work  to  build  up  language  resources  for  Irish,  the  Commission  and  Ireland 
reached  an  agreement  at  the  end  of  2019  on  the  transfer  of  translation  memories 
containing alignments of English and Irish texts from national legislation. The Commission 
has  so  far  received  alignments  of  580  legal  texts  from  the  Translation  Service  of  the  Irish 
Parliament to this end.  

An Irish machine translation engine based on neural technology was built in March 2018 as 
part of the Commission’s eTranslation system and is made available to the EU institutions, to 
the Irish authorities and to SMEs. Due to the increasing demand in the EU institutions and to 

16   The terminology database used by all EU institutions, also partly available to the public. 
17   https://www.focloir.ie/ga/  

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the improving quality of the output, the use and quality of eTranslation in the EU institutions 
has increased and is expected to continue increasing as the linguistic corpora grows. This is 
important  as  high-quality  output  is  needed  to  handle  the  increased  workload  when  the 
derogation  ends.  The  European  Language  Resource  Coordination  initiative  is  seeking  to 
collect more language data to improve the engines.  

In  terms  of  Irish-language  resources  for  interpretation,  the  Knowledge  Centre  on 
Interpretation  developed  by  DG  Interpretation,  a  single  go-to  space  to  manage  and 
exchange knowledge, create synergies and share best practice on all types of interpretation, is 
fully available in Irish. Irish is one of the 33 languages available in the speech repository for 
professional interpreters and potential future interpreters to practise their skills.  

f. 

Issues relating to the availability of the acquis 

Irish is  the  first  official  language into which the  body of EU law (the  acquis) has not  been 
translated.  To  address  the  lack  of  an  Irish  version  of  EU  law,  the  EU  institutions  have 
translated  priority  pieces  of  law  whenever  resources  permit,  so  far  15 109  pages.  These 
translations are not authenticated but underpin the translation of related legislation, improve 
translation memories and aid operational efficiency. For similar reasons, the Court of Justice 
is translating historical case law and text segments/phrases that recur frequently in its texts. 

Since September 2018, Ireland has funded an internship programme to contribute to this 
work  to  translate  the  acquis.  The  budget  allocated  until  2021  funds  10  interns  per  year  to 
spend  10  months  on  placement  in  the  EU  institutions.  The  COVID-19  pandemic  had  an 
impact on this scheme, with only 7 trainees taking up the 10 places available in 2021.  

8 

 
 
III. 

Conclusions  

Building  up  a  new  language  regime  with  an  existing  Member  State  has  been  a  unique 
endeavour.  The  EU  institutions  and  Ireland  have  worked  closely  together  to  implement  the 
Regulation.  Both  parties  have  carried  out  important  work,  investing  significant  resources, 
jointly  and  separately,  and  taking  innovative  and  sui  generis  measures  to  increase  the 
availability  of  documents  and  language  resources  in  Irish.  They  met  regularly  to  monitor 
progress on the strands of work set out in the Regulation necessary for its implementation.  

As  a  result,  the  volume  of  translation  into  Irish  tripled  between  2016  and  2021.  The  EU 
institutions  have  successfully  been  handling  the  gradual  reduction  of  the  derogation,  whilst 
protecting the seamlessness of the EU’s multilingual legislative process. 

In terms of progress in recruiting in-house staff, the EU institutions increased the number of 
in-house  Irish-language  staff  from  58  in  2016  to  138  by  April 2021.  In  2020,  the  pace  of 
selection  process  slowed  due  to  the  COVID-19  pandemic,  but  recruitment  will  continue  in 
2021 to make the staffing level comparable to that of most other official languages.  

To  complement  their  in-house  capacity,  the  EU  institutions  are  increasing  the  use  of 
outsourced  translation  and  interpretation  services.  The  quality  of  outsourced  translations  is 
good and the EU institutions expect to work with contractors increasingly for translation into 
Irish. Continued awareness-raising efforts are needed to further increase the pool of potential 
candidates for both in-house and outsourced translation and interpretation. 

All parties made progress in building up Irish-language resources. Cooperation on the IATE 
terminology  project  continued  with  support  from  the  Government  of  Ireland.  The  regular 
transfer of translation memories of bilingual corpora of Irish national law started in 2020. A 
new  English-Irish  neural  machine  translation  engine  was  built  in  2018  as  part  of  the 
eTranslation system and its use in the EU’s language services has increased over the years. 

The close cooperation forged between all parties will need to continue to consolidate capacity 
beyond 2022.  The Commission  needs to complete the ongoing recruitment  of additional 20 
staff in the second half of 2021, and as of January 2022 will make full use of all resources 
and  bring  in  a  flexible  prioritisation  system  to  manage  demand.  The  other  EU  institutions 
envisage  recruiting  another  40  staff  to  bring  the  total  number  of  Irish-language  staff  to  +/- 
200 by the end of 2021. The EU institutions need to remedy the high share of temporary to 
permanent staff by organising further EPSO and internal competitions to ensure a sustainable 
service. 

On  the  basis  of  the  elements  in  this  Report  and  the  continued  implementation  of  ongoing 
measures  between  now  and  the  end  of  2021,  the  Commission  concludes  that  the  EU 
institutions will have sufficient available capacity, relative to the other official languages to 
apply Regulation No 1 without a derogation as of 1 January 2022. 

9