Romanian Leonard Orban, the new EU Commissioner for Multilingualism, has completed his cabinet which is dominated by a French and a German and does not include any Anglophone. The team also includes two Romanians, une Portuguese, a Spaniard and a Finn.
That prompted news websites such as Novinite.com to write that the new commissioner “threatens” the English language.
Orban himself said that by naming French Patricia Bugnot as head of cabinet and German Jochen Richter as deputy head he wanted to send a message to Europe - without naming the meaning of it.
During his hearings before the European Parliament prior to his installation in office Orban had said he would give the same priority to all official languages of the European Union and warned that “English is not enough”.
The other members of the his cabinet are Viorel Serbanescu and Silvia Dinca from Romania, Johan Haggman from Finland, Catulina Soares Guerreiro from Portugal and Eva Valle Lagares from Spain.
