Stefaan VAN DER JEUGHT
The free movement of goods is one of the four core freedoms in the EU internal market. In that regard the linguistic diversity of the EU can form an obstacle to the achievement of that aim, when on a national or even subnational level specific regulatory linguistic requirements are imposed on the labelling of products. In this article, it will be shown that EU legislation does not tackle this issue in a general and uniform way, but proceeds rather on a case-to-case basis. The lack of a global and coherent policy in this regard has resulted in heterogeneous linguistic arrangements and lacking language rights for consumers. It is argued in this article that there is need for more coherent linguistic rights on the basis of clear and transparent general criteria such as product hazards, public health and consumer protection. As a general rule, a better balance should be struck between the essential principles underlying any linguistic regulatory provision, namely the freedom of language (for manufacturers, importers and distributors) to market their products in the EU internal market on the one hand, and the territoriality principle on the other, according to which Member States may determine the use of languages on their territory in order to protect the language rights of end-users and consumers.
Keywords: Product labelling, language rights of consumers