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LANGUAGE POLICY

The European Defence Agency (EDA) is committed to multilingualism and recognises the importance of communicating with EU citizens across the EU and of facilitating access to information in their respective languages.
language policy

Our commitment to linguistic diversity 

The EU has 24 official languages: Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish.  

EDA aims to strike the balance between respecting European linguistic diversity and practical considerations such as target audience, time constraints as well as human and financial resource implications.  

In this light,  

  • EDA strives to adopt a pragmatic and cost-effective approach when implementing its language policy.  

  • EDA supports the pooling of translation resources where possible, to reduce costs and ensure that EU citizens have more information available in a variety of official EU languages.  

  • EDA is committed to making maximum use of all available translation tools and services at its disposal. 

Use of languages in EDA 

In practice, EDA’s internal working language is English. The main language used on EDA’s public website is accordingly also English which allows for continuously creating, monitoring and updating content and optimising resources. 

The EDA website furthermore provides links to the official websites of the participating Member States’ Defence Ministries where information is available in the respective national language(s). 

EDA aims to make its website as accessible as possible to its users. While all EDA publications are generally available in English, selected key documents, such as EDA factsheets, may also be translated and published in other EU languages. Moreover, Council Decisions and other EU legal instruments setting out the EDA’s legal framework or applicable to EDA are published in the Official Journal of the European Union and available in all EU official languages. 

Public inquiries, requests for access to documents and access to personal data

Requests for information, access to documents and access to personal data can be made in any EU official language. EDA ensures that, as far as possible, citizens writing in one of the EU official languages receive a reply in the same language, in accordance with EDA’s Code of Good Administrative Behaviour. 

To facilitate a swift handling of requests and to avoid delayed responses due to translation needs, EDA may make use of standard responses to requests for information, access to documents and access to personal data, and relies on native speakers within EDA to adjust these where necessary. 

Public procurement and recruitment

In the frame of its procurement procedures, EDA uses the language of the contracts, mostly English. Economic operators and candidates to EDA procurement procedures may request additional information linked to the procurement documents in any of the EU official languages. 

EDA staff is multicultural and covers a wide range of EU languages. However, due to the limited resources available and to ensure a swift handling of any queries, candidates to EDA recruitment procedures are invited to contact the Agency in English. As English is in practice EDA’s internal working language, a very good command of English is furthermore a requirement for recruitment at the Agency.  

EDA press releases & press events

Due to the need to communicate to the press quickly on topical issues, EDA press releases are generally published in English. Where pertinent, EDA may translate press releases into other languages as well. In the context of EDA participating in press briefings at the Council, translation into/from French may be offered, as per Council practice.  

EDA social media

EDA pursues an active presence on social media platforms in order to provide easily accessible information to a wider public and to engage with its community of users, while increasing the quality of the interaction. Content on EDA’s social media channels is usually published in English due to its international outreach and to allow EDA staff in charge to perform quality control and follow-up. Occasionally, EDA publishes social media posts in other languages. Social media apps may furthermore facilitate and provide automated translations of the texts in other languages and thus allow for greater public outreach.