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Law and economics of the European multilingualism

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Abstract

The economics of language applied to multilingualism in the European Union (EU) has only recently come to the fore. Languages economics and Law and Economics disciplines both emerged in the 1960s. However, no study has, hitherto, linked these disciplines. This paper intends to fill that void. Language barriers are the last major remaining barriers for the EU’s ‘single’ market. The lack of coordination of multilingualism in the EU stems from a taboo crystallized by a dilemma between economic efficiency and linguistic diversity—i.e., the maximization of wealth versus the maximization of utility. The EU Member States (MSs) do not hasten to coordinate their language policies at the EU level inasmuch as they overestimate the benefits of the current EU multilingualism while drastically underestimating its costs. Coordination shall occur when MSs evaluate the costs and benefits of the current EU multilingualism. This will uncover the aforementioned dilemma, that will only be resolved when both Law and Economics are applied. In pursuing this objective a “Linguistic Coase Theorem” adapted from the work of Parisi and the Nobel Prize winner, Ronald Coase is elaborated. Having outlined the basic notions deriving from the EU Law of Languages and the Economics of Languages (Introduction), the paper scrutinizes the costs and benefits incurred by the current non-coordinated EU multilingualism (Part I). Subsequently, a ‘Linguistic Coase Theorem’ is elaborated in order to reach a Pareto-optimal outcome, thereby solving the dilemma—both economic efficiency and the linguistic diversity being enhanced (Part II).

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Notes

  1. Article 342 TFEU (Article 217 of the Rome Treaty, Article 290 of the Nice Treaty).

  2. Article 55 TEU (Article 53 TEU of Nice Treaty).

  3. Articles 20 et 24 TFEU (Articles 17 and 21 respectively of TEC of the Nice Treaty).

  4. Article 165 TFEU (Article 149 of TEC of Nice Treaty).

  5. Regulation 1/58, O.J. (1958) 017/385.

  6. Reply to Written Question E4099/00 (2001) C23E/68.

  7. Case T-120/99 (2001) "Kik v. OHMI" with a dismissed appeal in the Case C-361/01 P (2003) "Kik v. OHMI"; Case C-42/97 (1999) "Parliament v. Council".

  8. Leonard Orban, Commissioner for Multilingualism, Interview of the 12th November 2008 for EurActiv.

  9. Source: http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2008/01/21/story53174.asp 11.

  10. DG Translations (2008). The hyperinflation in the number of translations creates necessarily problems of uniqueness of meanings.

  11. Hence the problems of the binding force of non-translated law (Bobek 2007).

  12. The delay cost can include the loss of lives. See The Guardian, July the 28th of 2004, Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2004/jul/28/politics.europeanunion.

  13. Case 80/76 (1997) "North Kerry Milk Products Ltd. V. Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries"; Case 30/77 (1977) "Régina v. Pierre Bouchereau"; Case 100/84 (1985) "Commission of the European Communities v. United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland"; Case C-449/93 (1995) "Rockfon A/S v. Specialarbejderforbudet"; Case C-72/95 (1996) "Aannemersbedrijf P·K. Kraaijeveld BV e.a. v. gedeputeerde Staten van Zuid-Holland".

  14. Article 126-1 EC Treaty.

  15. Decision 1720/2006, November the 15th of 2006. The "Lifelong Learning" Programme's 2nd Activity concerns "Languages and Language Learning" and has received in 2008 for two years 9,685,633€. Hence, the cost of EU language programmes is approximately 4,842,826€ per year. Source: http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/llp/ka2/key_activity_2_en.htm.

  16. European Commission, Eurydice, (2008)“Key Data on Teaching Languages at School in Europe”, p.93, Available at: http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/ressources/eurydice/pdf/0_integral/095EN.pdf.

  17. Articles 28, 29 and 30 of EC-Treaty.

  18. Opinion of Advocate General Jacobs, §44 for C-412/93 (1995) "Leclerc-Siplec".

  19. C-8/74 (1974) "Procureur du Roi v. Dassonville" where the ECJ stated that "all trading rules enacted by Member States which are capable of hindering, directly or indirectly, actually or potentially, intra-Community trade are to be considered as measures having an effect equivalent to quantitative restrictions".

  20. C-120/78 (1979), "Rewe Zentrale v. Bundesmonopolverwaltung für Branntwein".

  21. Opinion of Advocate General Cosmas §56 for C-385/96, (1998) "Goerres".

  22. C-33/97 (1999) "Colim NV v. Bigg's Continent Noord NV".

  23. C-369/89 (1991) "Piageme v. BVBA Peeters": the ECJ judged §16 that "the obligation exclusively to use the language of the linguistic region constitutes a measure having equivalent effect to a quantitative restriction on imports, prohibited by Article 30 of the Treaty". A producer in Belgian is allowed to label its products only in French (or only in Flemish) and sell them throughout Belgium due to the absence of consumers' disenfranchisement.

  24. C-85/94, (1995) "VZM v. Peeters NV": the ECJ affirmed that the Directive 79/112, within which the notion of "language easily understood by the purchaser" is promoted, aims to “ensure that the consumer is provided with information rather than to impose the use of a specific language”. The preoccupation is the information, not the language which is seen as only an information tool. An “easily understood language” is determined with respect of the “similarity of words in different languages”, “the widespread knowledge amongst the population concerned of more than one language”, “the existence of special circumstances such as a wide-ranging advertising campaign or wide-spread distribution of the product”. On this latter criterion, concern can be expressed from the viewpoint of competition policy. Indeed, detrimental effects are created since outsiders without well-known products have to bear relatively high costs of translation and/or advertising, whereas the insiders can afford to avoid these costs—hence strengthening the comparative advantages of insiders. For us, this criterion should not be contemplated by the ECJ. Accordingly, it is necessary to criticise the ECJ ruling C-366/98 "Geoffroy v. Casino France" whereby Coca-Cola (the incumbent) labeling in English (the linguistic hegemon) in France has been authorized not to translate the bottles in French because they are "well-known" products. A contrario, outsiders will have to translate and/or advertise because of their unknown products. 26 Opinion Advocate Generale Cosmas §50 for C- 385/96 (1998) "Goerres".

  25. C-51/93 (1994) "Meyhui v. Schott Zwiesel Glaswerke".

  26. Directive (1969) 69/493.

  27. Gastronomical tastes differences diverge strongly across the MSs enshrined in consumers' preferences. These differences are obviously part of the cultural differences between Europeans. However, for the purpose of our study, we shall not consider them as we aim at explaining the general effect of cultural barriers as non-tariff barriers within the EU market, and not focusing on one particular type of product—namely, foodstuffs products.

  28. We shall adopt this definition although Stigler’s definition differs from the Bain’s wider definition. See: Bain (1956). Also, Demsetz (1982) and Von Weizsacker (1980).

  29. E.g. Decision IV/M.993 (1998) “Bertelsmann/Kirch/Premiere” where the relevant geographic market was defined as being the German-speaking area; Decision COMP/JV.37 (2000) “BSkyB/Kirch PayTV".

  30. E.g. Decision COMP/M.2724 (2002) “Royal Bank Private Equity/Cinven/Ambion Brick” where the relevant market as been defined as the UK and Ireland together.

  31. Decision IV/M.400 (1994) « Allied Lyons/HWE-Pedro Domecq », §33: “Member States’ labeling requirement, for using national language […] does not constitute significant barrier to entry” for some alcohols. Here, the relative high prices of alcohol bottles compared to low translation requirements make the language barriers superable.

  32. It is remarkable to notice that Beckmann, in the “Ranking of countries in order of estimated economic distance from selected countries” (Table 5) interestingly evidences that the economically closest country for a given country is the country sharing a common language with the country of reference. Either the national language of the country is shared—e.g. Germany/Austria; Ireland/UK—or one of the languages of the country—e.g. Belgium/Netherlands; France/Belgium; Italy/Switzerland—or receptive multilingualism is possible—e.g. Norway/Sweden; Sweden/Denmark.

  33. Nordström and Vahlne (1992:10) concluded that psychic distance comprises "cultural […], structural (such as legal and administrative systems) and language differences". They classify language distance as a category per se, not as a sub-category of cultural distance as we adopt. This divergence is not significant for our purpose since cultural differences within the EU are limited for market entry decision.

  34. Furthermore, language is a key determinant of the performance of a country in general. The more prominent a country's language is, the greater the country's economic performance.

  35. The absence of a Community Patent damage 90% of the European businesses. Source: “The European Parliament of Entreprises”, http://www.cebre.cz/en/news/new-147/33.

  36. Commissioner Jan Figel to EUobserver, 18.12.2008: http://euobserver.com/879/27308.

  37. E.g. Time's article, 01.11.2004: http://www.time.com/time/europe/html/040119/brain/story.html.

  38. Article 17 to 23 EC Treaty; Articles 39 to 41 EC Treaty; Article 3(1) of the Council Regulation 1612/68; Council Directive 2004/38; C-379/87 (1989) "Groener v. Minister for Education"; C-274/96 (1998) “Bickel and Franz”; C-424/97 (2000) “Haim II”.

  39. COM(2007)359, European Commission, “Towards Common Principles of Flexicurity: More and better jobs through flexibility and security”, June the 27th 2007; 16201/07, SOC 523 ECOFIN 503, European Council, “Common Principles on Flexicurity”; COM(2006) 708, European Commission, “Green Paper on the Modernization of Labour Law”.

  40. COM(2005) 494 “The Commission’s Contribution to the Period of Reflection: Plan-D for Democracy, Dialogue and Debate”, 13.10.2005; COM(2008) 158/4 “Debate Europe—Building on Experience of Plan D for Democracy, Dialogue and Debate”, 12.03.2008.

  41. SEC(2006) 1553, Wallstrom M., “Plan D: Wider and Deeper Debate on Europe“, 24.11.2006.

  42. SEC 88/524 (1988) "Europe 1992—The Overall Challenge".

  43. COM 85/310 (1985) "White Paper from the Commission to the European Council—Completing the Internal Market".

  44. Also, Emerson et al. (1988), Baldwin (1989).

  45. SEC 96/2378 (1996), European Commission, "The 1996 Single Market Review"; European Commission, (2002), Working Document "The Internal Market—10 Years Without Internal Frontiers", Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/10years/docs/workingdoc/workingdoc_fr.pdf, where we can see that each household gained only €570 per year for the first 10 years of the Single Market (€5,700/10), a gain well below the expectations the realization of the Single Market had given.

  46. The EU GDP for 2006 amounts €11,583,403 million (Eurostat 2008). Therefore, 7% of the EU 2006 GDP equals €810,838 million; these costs represent more than eight times the EU budget (€100 billion).

  47. The only MS who did not use its linguistic right is the Luxemburg for Luxemburgish. However, the situation of the Luxemburg is very particular as French and German are the two other official languages of Luxembourg, and as Luxemburgish is spoken by very small number of people who above all are fluent in both French and German.

  48. Restatement made by Cooter and Ulen (2007).

  49. Idem.

  50. Empirical researches have shown importance of the assumption of full information for having efficient bargains (Hoffman and Spitzer 1982; Hoffman and Spitzer 1986).

  51. The quest for having its own language as an important EU language incurs the costs of rent-seeking, with each MS seeking rents granted to one's language by the EU institutions. For instance, France spent €1,890,000 in 2003 in order to promote the use of French in the EU institutions (Herbillon 2003).

  52. Only 22% of EU citizens say to have"very good" English (Eurobarometer 2006). Self-assessment of language proficiency are commonly said to be biased due to an overconfidence bias. In non-Germanic Europe, less than 1% of Europeans are "able to communicate more or less correctly in English at the end of their secondary studies", Source: Piron C., http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/power.htm.

  53. Nobel Prize Winner Reinhard Selten and Jonathan Pool explain the instability of English with recourse to game theory (Selten and Pool 1981; Selten and Pool 1991; Selten and Pool 1997) whilst a wide-spread artificial language "might be stable" (Pool 1991b).

  54. The neutrality of Latin is relative because Latin connotes the Roman Empire (from which half of Europe has never been under domination), and still connotes the Catholic Church as it is the official language of the Vatican State.

  55. Empirical researches since one century have proven that the preliminary learning of Esperanto "led to a 25% improvement in acquiring Russian, 30% for German, 40% for English, 50% for French". Source: http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Propedeutic-value-of-Esperanto.

  56. Prof. Elgin who have taught Esperanto in the US writes: "But I can say without hesitation that if you speak and read almost any Germanic or Romance language you can learn to read Esperanto easily in three or four hours. If you know one Germanic and one Romance language—English and Italian, for example, or German and French—you can almost read it on sight without any instruction whatsoever" (Elgin 2000:198).

  57. Even with this highly prudent assumption, the efficiency of Esperanto is great enough not to create a lock-in effect with English and to overcome the switching costs, something proven with a simple calculus. If we optimistically assume that half of the EU citizens speak 'very good' English (250 million EU citizens), then it costs: 250 million × 1,500 h = 375 billion of hours of teaching for the entire EU citizenry to speak a 'very good' English. The cost of Esperanto is: 500 million × 500 h = 250 billion of hours. It costs 1.5 times (375/250=1.5) more to have half of the EU citizens speaking 'very good' English than for every EU citizens to become fluent in Esperanto.

  58. Pool (1991a) in the same vein proposed to reconcile "efficiency" and "fairness" through taxes.

  59. These figures are rough estimations and must not be accepted per se as precise financial assessment. The zero cost in language barriers when Esperanto is adopted might seem excessive, but our purpose is only to demonstrate that Esperanto minimizes the costs of language barriers. Incidentally, Grin (2005) found that the adoption of the sole use of Esperanto inside the EU institutions would create a saving of €20 billion per year; a gain we implicitly include in the said minimization of costs.

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Acknowledgments

This Article has benefited from the significant comments of Professor Thomas Eger and his continuous and genuine enthousiasm. Also, I would like to thank Professor Patrick Leyens for his enlightening remarks he made regarding very early drafts. Generally, I would like to warmly thank Professor De Swaan for having shown a great interest in this paper presented at the Conference « Concept and Consequences of Multilingualism in Europe » in Budapest in Septembre 2009, all the participants of the Conference organised at the Aarhus Business School on « European Symposium on Language For Specific Purposes » in August 2009, and finally all the participants of the Conference organised at the University of Trier on French-German Talks on Law and Economics in Decembre 2009. All remaining errors are naturally mine.

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    Aurélien Portuese

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Portuese, A. Law and economics of the European multilingualism. Eur J Law Econ 34, 279–325 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10657-010-9171-1

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