section_path: Demographics/Languages
section_name: Languages
paragraph_text: Languages
  
  The EU has 24 official languages: Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Irish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, and Swedish. Important documents, such as legislation, are translated into every official language and the European Parliament provides translation for documents and plenary sessions. Most EU institutions use only a handful of working languages: the European Commission conducts its internal business in three procedural languages: English, French, and German; the Court of Justice uses French as the working language, and the European Central Bank conducts its business primarily in English. Even though language policy is the responsibility of member states, EU institutions promote multilingualism among its citizens.
  
  The most widely spoken language in the EU is English; the language is spoken by 44 per cent of the population (2016 data) and studied by 95 per cent of school students, although following the withdrawal of the United Kingdom less than 1 per cent of the population speak it natively. German and French are spoken by 36 per cent and 30 per cent of the population. More than half (56 per cent) of EU citizens are able to engage in a conversation in a language other than their mother tongue.
  
  Luxembourgish (in Luxembourg) and Turkish (in Cyprus) are the only two national languages that are not official languages of the EU. Catalan, Galician and Basque are not recognised official languages of the EU but have official status in Spain. Therefore, official translations of the treaties are made into them and citizens have the right to correspond with the institutions in these languages. There are about 150 regional and minority languages in the EU, spoken by up to 50 million people. The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages ratified by most EU states provides general guidelines that states can follow to protect their linguistic heritage. The European Day of Languages is held annually on 26 September and is aimed at encouraging language learning across Europe.