A DISPROPORTIONATE rise in the use of English is threatening the use of other European languages in the European Union, according to a Polish MEP.

Lukasz Kohut made the claim in an amendment to a draft opinion for the European Parliament’s committee on culture and education, which stressed the importance of “preserving and promoting multilingualism” in all the EU’s institutions and other bodies, along with the need to treat all official languages equally.

It also acknowledged the “invaluable contribution” of the translation centre’s services to their “smooth functioning … and to making their work transparent and accessible to Union citizens in their respective mother tongues”.

A first amendment to the opinion, from Morten Lokkegaard, a Danish MEP, added a rider recommending that “the services of external providers to be used to a larger extent”.

German MEP Christine Anderson tabled a second amendment, which called for documents to be translated in all the EU’s official languages:

The amendement read: “Calls for texts to be translated not only into selected official languages, but into all official languages of the Union, in order to achieve the objective of equal treatment and not to put minority languages at a disadvantage.”

A member of the parliament’s Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, Kohut is also something of a champion of the Silesian language. However, his amendment suggested he is no great fan of English.

It read: “Regrets the disproportionate increase in the use of English, which jeopardises the use of all other European languages.”

The National told last week how English would cease to be the official language of the EU – which we described as another consequence of Britain’s exit from the bloc.

European and Scottish affairs correspondent, Udo Seiwert-Fauti, told us then: “English will be only a working language in talking to each other within the EU but it will end as the official EU language.”

His remark was disputed on our website by Nicholas Whyte, who said it was “completely untrue”, and added: “Regulation No 1 lists the EU’s official languages; it has not been changed and nobody is talking about changing it.”

However, Seiwert-Fauti stood his ground, telling The National: “The thing is it’s been debated many times … let’s wait for next EU Parliament session in January. We will see then.

“If the rules and regulations are still working, this [English] has to go.”

Seiwart-Fauti continued: “At the moment many in Brussels and Strasbourg have other problems to solve.

“I was there when this problem came up.

“It’s up to the EU Parliament to decide, which will have many implications on internal translation services.”

The UK is still, however, a full member of the Council of Europe (CoE) in Strasbourg, where English and French are the official languages, and is due to pay around €20 million (£18.1m) into its budget this month.

Seiwert-Fauti said the UK flag was still flying in Strasbourg and the UK had also agreed to follow decisions from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the European Court of Justice.