This link showed up in another auxiliary language forum. The link is to an FAQ about multilingualism in the European Union. The link goes directly to an English text, but there are links to the text in all the other official languages of the EU. One paragraph relates directly to the idea of a single auxiliary language, mentioning Esperanto:

The idea that a single language could be the solution to all linguistic needs is too simplistic. Latin or Esperanto are sometimes suggested as a single, pan-European language that the EU should adopt. However, since almost everybody would have to learn either of these from scratch, this solution would be equally hard and not terribly useful in relations with the rest of the world. Training teachers and teaching 500 million Europeans a new language would take a lot of time and resources. This is why the European Commission’s commitment to multilingualism promotes diversity rather than uniformity.

I myself do not agree with this point, at least with respect to E-o or two other auxlangs (Sudanglo and I simply disagree here on whether there are any other *real* auxlangs than E-o), but I thought the document might be of interest to others.

However, since almost everybody would have to learn either of these from scratch, this solution would be equally hard and not terribly useful in relations with the rest of the world.

Right, and it's so much better, when most people are forced to learn English from scratch. Let's be honest, "multilingualism" won't get you very far, if you want to do anything in EU. Yes, you can write to the Commission in your native language and with some luck, you may also receive response also in your tongue. But that's about as far as it gets you. To do anything more, you'd have to translate your documents into one of the big languages. So much of the "equality".

Training teachers and teaching 500 million Europeans a new language would take a lot of time and resources

But this is not a new problem. It is already the case that such an investment is already in place as all over Europe time and resources are dedicated to the teaching of English.

The counter argument which Esperanto makes is that the training of language teachers to teach Esperanto would be a doddle and the time to achieve proficiency in the learners much reduced.

In Australia they are teaching Esperanto in primary schools under a system whereby the teachers and puils learn at the same time, or perhaps more exactly a system under which the teacher is a little in advance of the pupils .

Look at the first chapter here - What is this Kit For

If the EU really would like to ease the communication problem, then they could test a pilot program with Esperanto and evaluate its results. Why don't they do that? It is simple - the English lobby in EU is too strong to allow for that. The cost argument is not valid - English is being taught for 12-15 years (al least in Polland) while Esperanto would require only two.

That's what i think too, hebda999

Addionally the sentence

"europa.eu":... Latin or Esperanto are sometimes suggested as a single, pan-European language that the EU should adopt ...

shows, that they didn't get the idea behind Esperanto as being everyones second language and not replacing any other languages.

To cite the original link:

English is the most widely known second language in the EU. However, recent surveys show that, even now, less than half of the EU population knows it well about to be able to communicate.

that the idea of having English as the lingua franca in the EU also doesn't work that well,
the question for me is, which survey are they using? Is that page updated regularly
and new results like that english is now perfectly spoken by 98% (sorry for the joke)?

It's also interesting to note that:

The 23 official languages of the EU institutions are: Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish.

and

The European Commission conducts its internal business in three ‘procedural’ languages — English, French and German. The Members of the European Parliament receive working documents in their own language.

looks like that, the "Multilingualism" in the EU is just greatly made up. You have actually
three working languages in which everything is actually done and the other 20 languages are
only in the mix, just to make up this illusion of Multilingualism.

I find it too interesting in the text that in the paragraph of "In short, what is the aim of the EU's language policies?" can be found:

and because multilingual citizens are better placed to take advantage of education and job opportunities in the Single Market.

so it is actually all about the market and economy.

Regarding the question "Is every EU document translated into all official languages?" we have
too an interesting quote:

No. Documents are translated in line with priorities ....

...
Other documents (for example, correspondence with national authorities and decisions addressed to particular individuals or entities) are translated only into the languages needed ...

This paints an interesting picture for me. The EU's Multilingualism looks like a
Potemkins village

Frankly I'm sick and tired of the basic position of the EU on this point. Even the three procedural languages collapse into English in many cases. Unfortunately in places like the Netherlands, and several other West European countries, this is encouraged by a population that believes itself to be in total command of English, when in fact they just aren't.

I speak/write Dutch 99% of the time, but whenever I write an official letter or E-mail in English 8/10 times the reply contains gibberish and/or grave spelling mistakes (like in an e-mail I had yesterday where someone told me something was "my fold" instead of 'my fault' ). It diminishes communication effectiveness. Not long back I was reading a chemistry textbook by two Norwegians which was in English and it was simply impossible to read; riddled with errors.

I don't blame people for not being in perfect command of English, but I just wish countries like NL,and parts of Scandinavia would wake up ad realise that they aren't helping the cause of accurate communication over the EU by championing the average level English spoken in the EU. Some countries actually are better than others, but they tend to be those countries where the languages are closely related to English and it just duplicates the same problem of shutting out those who find English more of a challenge.

They haven't even tried to implement Esperanto, not even a small scale study. If they were being scientific about it they'd have done the experiment and tried to falsify the hypothesis, but they haven't. The 'commitment' to multilingualism isn't just a sham, it's an expensive sham.

Du sprichst mir aus der Seele, Vestitor.
(sorry, but i don't know any good equivalent in English to say this - the literal translation would be "you speak out of my soul.")

I was wondering if other approaches for reducing the language-confusion in Europe would be more likely to succeed. I see some kind of "language-erosion" occuring in countries that share a similar language. For example the dialects in the German-speaking countries tend to disappear and be replaced by Standard-Deutsch. Or media in Scandinavia: Often they don't see a need to translate or synchronize movies and films in their own language, if there's already a version in one of their neighbors language.

Regarding this situation i keep asking myself, if this could be the begin of the natural end of language-confusion. And it also makes me think, that using auxilary languages like Slovio, Interlingua and Folspraak are maybe more likely to succeed and perhaps can open the peoples minds towards the idea of an even more uniting language like Esperanto. The creator of Slovio thought that way. And in the case of Folkspraak i can confirm that it is quite easily readable if you speak German and - from what i can tell based on my few Norwegian-skills: also for Norwegians and therefore surely also for Danish and Swedish peoeple. What about the Dutch and the English men? Are you able to read Folkspraak?

I think it doesn't matter whether it's Esperanto or something like Slovio or Folkspraak. The EU is simply not interested.

It has been abundantly clear with regard to some activities by the European Esperanto Union (EEU).

The EEU is quite an idealistic group - much more idealistic than me! Their idealism and enthusiasm provides a useful test case - they wanted to launch a signature gathering campaign to ask the EU to recommend singing the European Hymn in Esperanto, as a culturally neutral language.

Though in my opinion the EEU met all of the requirements, they were given a solid "no", because according to the EU, Esperanto isn't part of the cultural heritage of any European country.

Libera Folio has an article about it.

In the article, Zlatko Tiŝljar says that he thinks the EU refused because they were afraid the EEU might actually get enough signatures, and they might open a debate about language use in the EU. I tend to agree with him; I don't know if it really would open a conversation about langauge use, but I think the EU just doesn't want to deal with it, they see it as not a serious thing, so they decided to shut it down from the beginning rather than risk that the EEU (a small group that no one outside of Esperanto has even heard of) might actually succeed.

The linguists (with more time on their hands than common sense) can mess around as much as they like in producing pidgins based on some group of languages, and yes they might come up with a 'language' such that the meaning of texts in that language can be guessed with some degree of success.

BUT, and it is a very important but, the gulf between that and making a 'language' in which potential learners can express themselves correctly and precisely (ie consistent with other users usage) is enormous.

For that to occur you need at least a language with simple rules that can be universally applied (ie Esperanto).

In any case, the conversion from the drawing board to full blown language is a very lengthy process as the whole history of the development of Esperanto demonstrates.

You need a comprehensive dictionary based on stable usage, a sizeable searchable corpus for checking nuances, coursebooks in different languages, a body of literature, agreement on best pronunciation, regular interaction among a sizeable group of speakers, a consensus which prevents the language breaking up into dialects, and so on.

If anybody fancies their chances in the IAL constructed language field, let them learn from the lessons of history that Esperanto provides.