The official languages of the institutions of the European Union are: Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek (Demotic), Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish. All decisions by the institutions are translated into all official languages, and European citizens may contact the institutions and receive a reply in any official language. For top-level meetings, interpreting into any official language is arranged as needed. Simultaneous interpreting between all official languages is always arranged for sessions of the European Parliament and the European Council.

Away from these formal meetings, a more flexible language régime is used. The primary working languages of the institutions are English, French and to some extent German, but other languages are used as befits the situation and the language skills of the people involved. The 1995 and 2004 expansions of the Union to countries where French is less used have strengthened the position of English and German as working languages.

Language skills of European citizens
This table from the year 2000 shows what proportion of citizens said that they could speak each of the official languages of the Union, either as mother tongue or as non-mother tongue (including as foreign language):

Language

Proportion of population of the EU speaking it as a mother tongueProportion of population of the EU speaking it NOT as a mother tongueTotal proportion speaking this language
German
24%8%32%
French
16%12%28%
English
16%31%47%
Italian
16%2%18%
Spanish
11%4%15%
Dutch
6%1%7%
Greek
3%0%3%
Portuguese
3%0%3%
Swedish
2%1%3%
Danish
1%1%2%
Finnish
1%0%1%
Note: This table relates to the older 15 Member States of the European Union (source: European Commission). Data for the new Member States are not yet available.