Interpreters set to disrupt meetings of EU ministers

Date: 24/02/2000

By Rory Watson

Council of Ministers' meetings are likely to be disrupted after Spain unexpectedly sabotaged plans to agree contractual arrangements with freelance interpreters at a meeting of EU foreign ministers last week.

The scores of permanent and freelance interpreters who work for the Council are planning to stage brief stoppages which could force delegates and officials to adjourn or cut short meetings.

At stake are legal changes designed to guarantee that the hundreds of freelancers hired to provide interpretation at meetings of the Council and other EU institutions work under the same terms as those recruited by the European Parliament, which has its own service.

For nearly a decade from 1989, freelance interpreters for both institutions received the same daily fee and paid EU tax. But this arrangement broke down in July 1998 when the EU's Court of First Instance gave a clean bill of health to the Parliament's scheme, but ruled that the Commission's system must be given a sounder legal base.

The Commission, with the support of the Portuguese presidency and a majority of EU governments, wants to change the staff regulations to remove the legal doubts surrounding the scheme which was in place until 1998.