Brussels, 10/04/2008 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 10 April, Commissioner for Multilingualism Leonard Orban received a German delegation in order to discuss the use of the German language in the EU institutions. Headed by Volker Hoff, German Minister for European Affairs in Hessen, Michael Gahler MEP (EPP-ED) and Oliver Paasch, the education minister of the German-speaking community of Belgium, the delegation gave the commissioner a petition signed by about 50 MEPs and representatives of 18 European regions. In the petition, they call for: - German to be considered on an equal footing with the procedural languages of the European Union; - all documents, websites and publications to be available in German; - citizens to be able to speak in German to address the institutions; - recruitment to better reflect languages; - and for budgetary resources to be made available for such requests. Commissioner Orban recalled that German is and will remain - like French and English - a procedural language of the Commission and that, furthermore, all citizens currently already have the possibility and the right to address the European institutions in their own language. He went on to add that he was currently working on improving the translation of documents from the European institutions into all official languages including German, and that he intended to support the long-term sustainability of the current linguistic regime with the budgetary limits. (I.L.)