A compromise was later reported to be on the cards over the tricky problem over the euro – the word, not the currency.
Four linguistically-unhappy EU member states – Hungary, Slovenia, Malta and Lithuania – now look ready to accept a deal from the European Commission on how to spell euro, the international media reported.
The biggest headache was for the 3.5 million people of Lithuania, who would normally write euras, eurue, eura, euru, eure, eurai, eurams, eurus, eurais and eurose, depending on the word’s function in a sentence. The genitive in particular has caused tempers to fray.
In a letter to the Dutch EU presidency, the Lithuanian government insisted: “The non-inflective form of the term euro is unacceptable to the Lithuanian language.”
But a fifth – Latvia – was still holding out against anything that makes the nation put an “e” and a “u” next to each other.
Surprisingly, the linguistic dispute never figured largely during the many years of negotiations leading up to the five countries, plus five others, joining the European Union – or Eiropas Savienibas in Latvian – last May.
Now they all say their languages are being insulted by having to use the word “euro” in translations of EU documents – because for them the word is meaningless.
“It’s all a matter of declensions and the use of the genitive,” explained one linguist.
“In some of the new languages which have now come into the EU family, the word euro changes depending on context and whereabouts in the sentence it is.”
“It’s a storm in a tea-cup,” said one EU official as EU ambassadors held a special meeting to talk the language of money.
But it is a storm which threatens to upset the signing of the new Constitutional Treaty in Rome later this month unless the five countries’ objections to the “euro” are resolved.