Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

Thu 05 May 2004EU orders its staff to cut a long story shortThe European Commission yesterday ordered its staff to produce shorter documents and fewer of them because it faces such a backlog in translating the wise words of Brussels into the nine new languages of the enlarged European Union.The backlog is already 60,000 pages and will climb to 300,000 pages within the next three years, unless something is done to reduce the EU's flood of prose, the Commission admitted yesterday. The entry of 10 new countries into the EU on May 1st increased the languages of the EU from 11 to 20.