BRUSSELS — Among all the myriad challenges facing the European Union with the pending departure of Britain is the fact that English would no longer be an official language.
The EU has 24 official and working languages, and each of the 28 member states is allowed to nominate one. While the U.K. chose English, Ireland selected Gaelic and Malta picked Maltese. That means that, with the departure of the U.K., English — the most widely spoken and written language in the EU’s institutions — might be an endangered species.
French and German officials have lobbied long and hard for their mother tongues to be more widely used in Brussels, but English has been hard to dislodge as Europe’s lingua franca.
Indeed, the choice of languages has strong political, diplomatic and cultural ramifications.
In an official speech Tuesday to the European Parliament, acknowledging with sadness the loss of Britain as an EU member, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker used only French and German.