Tough job in any language

Date: 30/11/1995

The EU's Scandinavian newcomers are not only teaching the rest a thing or two about transparency, they also have a very convincing line in neighbourly bi-partisanship.

When Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari visited Brussels last week, the ensuing press conference was billed as taking place in English, with interpretation into French only and no mention of Finnish at all - a scenario which would be ruled out by national pride in most European capitals.

The absence of Finnish might also have had something to do with the failure of EU institutions to find a sufficient number of Finns capable of interpreting from their native tongue into, say, Greek or Portuguese, and prepared to move from the frozen north to Brussels to act as interpreters and translators of the EU's most obscure language (no offence intended, Martti).

Documents for translation for the Council of Ministers, in particular, continue to travel regularly between the Justus Lipsius building and the lakeside log cabins which are the lot of the average freelance international wordsmith in Finland.