New members will push EU translators' bill to £700m

The arrival of 10 new countries will push the EU's language costs up to €1bn (£680m) a year as Brussels braces itself for the translation of an extra million documents annually.

When the EU expands on 1 May demand for translation is expected to surge from 1.3 million pages per year to 2.4 million by 2006. Interpreters will have to cope with at least the theoretical possibility of 380 language combinations.

The European Commission says that translation and interpreting costs are about €2 per citizen per year, less than 1 per cent of the EU budget. The total cost of enlargement was put yesterday at €25 per person.

In 1999 EU institutions spent €686m on translation and interpreters for 11 official languages. That is likely to rise by about €300m.

Each of the new countries - Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta and Cyprus - will be entitled to have all EU legislation translated into its language, and interpretation at ministerial meetings and for MEPs, although internal documents will largely be restricted to French or English, as now.

"In most meetings in the commission only English or French is spoken," one official said yesterday, "so this may have less impact than one thinks. However, the problems may be much greater in the European Parliament."

Already the EU is struggling in some areas. For 135 posts as translators of Maltese there were 90 applicants. Forty turned up for tests; 37 were successful. Of the 16 who applied to become interpreters none were judged good enough.

The dearth of experts in rarer languages will bring into play greater use of "relays". An intermediary language - normally English or French - would be used to translate, for example, from Hungarian to Portuguese.

Although internal reforms aim to reduce the burden, officials say that to allow proper democratic control some core work must be accessible in all the languages.

The European Commission already has more than 1,200 translators while contracting out a further 20 per cent of its work. It normally uses about 700 interpreters every day, about half of whom are freelancers, covering about 11,000 meetings each year.

Meanwhile, the EU's budget Commissioner, Michaele Schreyer, announced that €11.8bn would be allocated to the new countries for projects that can be started this year, and €5.105bn in cash. Agriculture will receive very little subsidy in 2004 - €287m - as direct payments are being phased in.

The new nations will start to contribute to the UK budget rebate immediately. Poland will pay €105m, Estonia €4.2m and Malta €2.4m. No new country will, however, be worse off as a result of enlargement.