Brussels, 05/08/2002 (Agence Europe) - In response to a question by MEP Christopher Huhne (ELDR, United Kingdom), the Commission explained that with ten new Member States and nine new Community languages, additional costs for translation and interpreting would rise to EUR 235 million as from 2006.
While pointing out that enlargement would almost double the number of official languages, Mr Huhne indicated in a press release that, "In theory, the costs of interpretation and translation increase dramatically with each new language because the number of potential combination multiplies. There are now eleven official languages, so enlargement will nearly double them…But savings made on translation - effectively using only three languages for most documents in the institutions, and pivot interpretation whereby an interpreter interprets out of English or French - means that this represents a much more modest increase tan most people expected". Mr Huhne further explained that, "At present translation and interpretation costs are running at about EUR 600 million a year. So the ten new Member States will add about 40 per cent to costs for an 80 per cent increase in languages". Mr Huhne is keen to put these additional administrative costs into context and explained that they represented 0.2% of the Community budget (estimated to bet EUR 112.5 billion in 2006). The MEP stressed that it "Having proper translation and interpretation is essential for democracy".