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The article describes the role of German as a working language and official language of the European Union. It also focuses on issues associated with the notion of an 'overarching' language of general use: especially in the field of law, each language reflects the specific legal and administrative traditions of the society in which it developed, meaning that different languages frequently lack precise one-to-one equivalents for particular legal concepts. Finally, the author assesses the 'economic value' of several European languages as proposed by Ulrich Ammons, demonstrating that German plays a leading role in this regard.
This paper deals with the linguistic situation of the European Union, especially considering the role played by the German language. Beginning with some general remarks on the historical mechanisms that may influence the relative importance of a given language on a global scale, the history of the German language is discussed with the aim of explaining its present situation as the language with the greatest number of native speakers in Europe. which, at the same time, plays a relatively unimportant role in international communication.