EU court admits Italian language appeal
(ANSA) – Brussels, October 16 – The European Court of Justice on Wednesday admitting Italy’s appeal to annul an EU-wide exam because it was only written in French, English and German.
The Luxembourg court annulled a call from the European Commission for applications in the sectors of European public administration, law, economy, audit and technologies of information and communication.
Potential candidates, the court explained, needed to know one of the (then) official 23 EU languages plus a satisfying knowledge of French, English or German as second language, which had to be different from the main language. This rule applied for admission, an access test and another exam.
Italy asked for the exam to be cancelled for violating regulation number 1/1958 on languages from the charter of fundamental rights of the statute of European Union officials.
The court looked into whether knowledge of one of the three languages was required for the job and ruled that the exam’s notice did not enable a verification. The court said the job’s requirement was a legitimate objective to demand knowledge of the languages but had to be objectively justified and the level of linguistic knowledge required had to be measured according to the effective requirements of the job.
Italy has been fighting for years to get Italian put on a par with the three official languages.