The billion €uro Babel

The EU is looking at an massive increase in its translation costs, which are set to soar by nearly 60 percent to over €1 billion a year, following the latest round of enlargement.

This is from the EU commission which is predicting that the annual cost of translation will increase to €807 million in the next few years from €549 million in 2003, when Brussels institutions already translated a staggering 1.3 million pages.

Interpreter services for the 50-60 meetings held each day in Brussels is forecast to increase to €238 million, from €105 million, once the EU's expansion to 25 has been fully completed. This brings the total annual cost of language services to over the €1 billion-mark.

And that is without the Basque separatists declaring UDI, which would add yet another language to the mix. Then there is Turkey looming over the horizon, to say nothing of Ireland, which still wants Irish to be declared an official language.

Do we really, really, want to be part of this madness?