Brussels, 28/02/2007 (Agence Europe) - Since accession by Romania and Bulgaria on 1 January 2007, the European Commission has made a positive appraisal of the situation of interpreter recruitment. The Union now has 27 member states and works in 23 official languages, including Irish since 1 January this year.
The Commission's Directorate General for Interpretation works for meetings arranged by the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, the European Economic and Social Committee, the Committee of the Regions, the European Investment Bank and other bodies and agencies of the European Union located in the member states. The European Parliament and the Court of Justice of the European Communities each have their own, separate interpreting service.
DG Interpretation provides interpreters for 50-60 meetings each day in Brussels and elsewhere. Each working day, 700-800 interpreters are ready to help the delegations of the member states and other countries understand each other. The DG employs over 500 staff interpreters, as well as a large number of freelancers on contract out of a total pool of more than 2,800 freelance interpreters worldwide, who have been accredited to work for the three EU interpretation services. The projections of the EU institutions in advance of the 2004 enlargement showed a need for 80 interpreters per new language per day on average for all institutions, once the new languages are fully integrated. DG Interpretation would require about half of these while working to maintain an overall 50/50 hiring split between staff and freelance interpreters.
The Commission has issued a table giving an overall view of new language interpreters (permanent and temporary staff and freelance) available to DG Interpretation. At the present time, the most represented new language is Polish, with a total of 106 interpreters (23 permanent staff and 83 freelance). For the other languages, with the exception of Maltese, the number of interpreters available is between 45 and 87 per language. For many languages, it is apparent that a serious effort must be made in each member state.
On 1 January 2007, DG Interpretation had 3 Bulgarian and 3 Romanian interpreters recruited as temporary agents, starting in January 2006. Another 6 interpreters for each language have temporary contracts with the European Parliament. A further 38 Bulgarian and 42 Romanian freelance interpreters are available to be shared between DG Interpretation, the EP and the Court of Justice. The first open competitions for interpreters for the two languages were completed before the end of 2006, for the first time ever before accession. Training in the two member states continues. DG Interpretation will recruit 4 successful candidates from the Bulgarian reserve list. With the current 3 temporary agents, DG Interpretation will have a total of 7 staff interpreters available plus a share of the freelance interpreters accredited to the institutions. A further series of freelance tests in Bulgaria is foreseen at the end of March 2007, for which there are currently 155 applications. DG Interpretation will recruit 5 successful candidates from the Romanian reserve. With the current 3 temporary agents (of which two have passed the open competition), DG Interpretation will have a total of 6 staff interpreters available plus a share of the freelance interpreters accredited to the EU institutions. A further series of freelance tests in Romania is foreseen in early March 2007 for which there are currently 455 applications.
The overall satisfaction rate of demand for interpretation is almost 90% (varying from 100% for the most widely used EU15 languages to 27% for Maltese for which only a limited number of interpreters is available). Just one month after accession, the overall satisfaction rate for the two new EU languages, Bulgarian and Romanian is already considerable at 86% for Bulgarian and 74% for Romanian. As far as Irish is concerned, resources available are very limited, but DG Interpretation is nonetheless able to provide interpretation in Irish at meetings of both the Parliament and the Council of the Union, and for plenary sessions of the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. The first meeting during which a speaker expressed himself in Irish was the General Affairs Council of 22 January 2007.
The Commission is preparing itself for the arrival of new languages. Thus, since November 2004, DG Interpretation has been cooperating with Croatia. In October 2005, this resulted in the creation, at Zagreb university, of the first full-time post-graduate training course for conference interpretation. In 2006, DG Interpretation and the European Parliament's Interpretation Directorate went to Turkey, where two centres of excellence have been designated to cooperate with the EU interpreting services. A first accreditation test has been organised. In 2006, a first information mission in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) made it possible to establish a first conference interpreting training course. The total cost of interpretation in the European Union institutions was around €195 million in 2006, i.e. €0.42 per citizen and per year. The annual cost of interpreting per citizen is not expected to increase significantly further to accession by Romania and Bulgaria and the addition of Irish to the official languages. (lc)