The territory of the European Union is made up of a rich and wide-ranging universe of languages. The European Union contains a wealth of languages. In its current form there are more than 60 autochthonous languages in the 27 Member States, with widely differing situations and legal statuses. The principal characteristic of the European linguistic diversity is the great heterogeneity of situations and internal legal statuses that the european languages display. Most of the languages of EU are spoken by very few people and few languages are enormously widespread. There are many languages in the EU, which, in spite of having an appreciable number of speakers, do not have official recognition. And there are languages that are co-official or have some sort of official recognition in some areas, but struggle to survive. Multilingualism is one of the defining characteristics of the EU, and it is worth examining how EU law deals with it.

The constitutional structure of the EU comprises two different components, one supranational (the European Community - EC) and one intergovernmental (the European Union). The EC is referred to as the first pillar, while the European Union in turn consists of two parts referred to as the second and third pillars respectively: the Common Foreign and Security Policy is the second, and the Police & Judicial Cooperation in Criminal Matters (the so called “area of Freedom, Security and Justice” - PJCC). The role of the common European institutions was from the outset more limited not just when it - which is logical - comes to legislation, but also when it comes to consultation and preparation of legislation. However, the ECJ retained jurisdiction to interpret the meaning of so called framework decisions in order to create a basis for uniform implementation in national law of such decisions. This was particularly true in relation to the Police and Judicial Cooperation in Criminal Matters. Whereas the European Court of Justice (ECJ) was granted jurisdiction in PJCC, the other community institutions, notably the European Commission, were given roles to supervise the implementation of framework decisions - but their role in enforcing uniformity was limited compared to the role of the community institutions in EC-law.