Multilingualism and its Consequences on European Union Law

The multilingual nature of the EU is only too often ignored by scholars who refer to only one language version of EU primary and secondary law, and – maybe worse – of CJEU case law. This is more and more common to the authors who use only the English language version for references, albeit writing in another language. Such an attitude sometimes leads to important misunderstandings of the concepts used in EU law. Furthermore, due both to its multilingual nature and to the multiplicity of concepts to be dealt with in view of the growing number of EU Member States, scholars who are excellent specialists of domestic law very often encounter problems with EU law, due to the fact that the same words do not have the same meaning when used in EU law and in domestic law. This chapter will recall and develop the legal notion of multilingualism of EU law and its consequence, before discussing the autonomy of EU law concepts with regard to concepts that are being used with the same wording in the domestic law of EU Member States.