Post-Brexit, English could be dropped as an official language of the EU

A Union Jack flag and European Union flag. — (Image credit: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

For the time being, English is an official language of the European Union and the main working tongue of its institutions, but that could soon change thanks to Brexit.

"English is our official language because it has been notified by the U.K.," Danuta Hubner, chairwoman of the European Parliament's constitutional affair committee, said Monday during a news conference on the legal repercussions of the U.K. leaving the EU. "If we don't have the U.K., we don't have English." Each member state can nominate one EU idiom, and while English is the most spoken language in Europe, Britain is the only one that chose it, Reuters reports.

English is one of the three languages used by researchers and companies to apply for EU patents, giving English speakers a leg up over the competition, and that edge might soon disappear. All EU documents and legal texts are translated into the bloc's 24 official languages, but Brits would have to do their own translating if English lost its status as an official language. French was the EU's dominant language through the 1990s.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.