Montenegro could temporarily use Croatian to translate the EU acquis ahead of accession

Montenegro may not manage to translate the entire body of European Union legislation before its planned accession. As a result, the European Commission is considering temporary exemptions, with one option being for Montenegro to use one of the EU’s existing official languages. Croatian appears to be the most obvious choice, Euronews reports.

Montenegro plans to become the EU’s 28th member by 2028, but before that it must adopt and translate the EU acquis, which comprises tens of thousands of legal acts. Concerns are growing in Brussels that the work may not be completed on time. Although Podgorica insists that it has invested significant resources and will meet the deadlines, EU officials have confirmed that the Commission has begun preparing contingency plans.

Another reason for this is concern expressed by Croatia over the quality of some of the translated texts. Zagreb and Podgorica also have a bilateral dispute that could slow the accession process. The scale of the task is enormous, as EU legislation has nearly doubled since Croatia joined in 2013.

Croatian as a solution

Candidate countries are required to translate all legislation themselves into their future official language, while EU institutions carry out a final review only at the end. The EU negotiating framework clearly requires Montenegro to „ensure translations of the acquis in good time before accession“ and to have a sufficient number of translators and interpreters. The Commission said it remains in regular contact with Montenegro and is monitoring its progress.

The Commission is therefore assessing several options for possible exemptions. One would be to allow Montenegro to temporarily use another EU official language until it completes all the translations. Podgorica would decide which language to use, but Croatian is considered the most likely candidate. It is the only EU official language that speakers of Montenegrin can fully understand.

However, such a solution could be politically sensitive. Podgorica has for years advocated international recognition of the Montenegrin language.

Previous examples: Malta and Ireland

Temporary language exemptions are not new in the EU. The first such example was Malta, which, due to a shortage of translators after joining the EU in 2004, was not required to translate all legal acts into Maltese for three years. It undertook to clear the backlog by the end of 2008.

Ireland’s case is different. The exemption was introduced decades after the country joined the EU, when Irish became a fully fledged official language. The obligation to translate all legal acts was therefore temporarily suspended.