Wednesday 5 September 2018

The fate of English in the EU after Brexit: Expected and unexpected twists

a column by Victor Ginsburgh, Juan Moreno-Ternero and Shlomo Weber for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

After Brexit, English can no longer retain its status as one of the EU's official or working languages.

This column uses data on languages spoken in the EU to show that post-Brexit, German and French would become dominant. Efforts to preserve English as an official language of EU institutions, which would require a unanimous vote among members, are unlikely to succeed.

This may be problematic for certain European countries in which English is a more widely spoken second language than German or French.

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