The effect of multilingualism on EU legal terminology

Abstract

Legal terminology in the European Union is highly influenced by law, language and culture that are closely intertwined together in all Member States. Although the European Union is considered to be an autonomous legal order with autonomous legal concepts, national conceptual meanings still stand in the way of the uniform interpretation of European legal terms, jeopardizing the terminological harmonization that the European Union so highly seeks. National legal concepts are embedded in their own cultural background and in a Union composed of twenty-eight different legal systems – a uniform comprehension of the same term is extremely difficult. This study promises to examine this situation by looking at the terms incorporated in EU Directives in order to determine the extent to which multilingualism in the European Union can have an effect on the terms adopted on the European platform. It will discuss whether a new EU legal culture should be sought to eliminate terminological discrepancies but it will also go a step further to establish whether it is the DCFR, the CESL or one common legal language that would best benefit term harmonization in the European Union.