1(2)2016+.pdf


The Place of English 
in an Expanding Europe

The boundaries of Europe are generally regarded asbeing the Atlantic Ocean in the west, the Arctic Ocean
to the north, the Ural Mountains and Ural River in the east, the
Caspian Sea, Caucasus mountains and Black Sea in the
southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south.

Despite these fixed boundaries, Europe can be said to be
expanding in a number of senses, particularly, since ‘Europe’
is increasingly taken to refer to the European Union. In 2004,
the EU grew to 25 Member States, and additional states within
the geographical boundaries of Europe have made formal
applications to join. These include Turkey, the majority of
which is deemed geographically to be in Asia. And those

European states in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union which have not yet applied
for membership, including Armenia, are receiving European funding through cross-
border projects.  

Outside the geographical boundaries, economic co-operation is increasing across  the
Mediterranean with the countries of the Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia), with
which 25 years of cooperation and five years of partnership were celebrated in 2000,
while the long-standing arrangements with former colonies under the General System of
Preferences and ACP agreements (Africa, Caribbean and Pacific) have continued and
been enhanced. There is growing media speculation that even countries in the Middle
East, such as Syria or Lebanon - even Iraq - might one day become, Member States.

At the same time, the internal political cohesion of the EU is increasing, notably in
the area of security, criminal law, human rights and environmental concerns, and through
the long process of drafting a Constitution bringing together the principles underlying
the thousands of treaties, conventions, directives, regulations and ad hoc agreements that
have been adopted over nearly fifty years by the EU and its predecessors, the various
European Communities.

Languages in Europe
The  linguistic  implications  of  these  developments are immense. The number of

official languages of the EU is now 22 - Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian,
Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian,
Luxemburgisch, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish and Swedish,
although two of these, Irish and Luxemburgisch, are used only for certain formal
documents.

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Armenian Folia Anglistika Culture Studies

Peter Sutton