Strasbourg (dpa) - European Union lawmakers on Tuesday gave their green light to the appointment of two new EU commission members from Bulgaria and Romania which are joining the bloc on January 1, 2007.

Euro MPs voted 595 in favour, 16 against and 29 abstentions on the the nomination of Romanian candidate Leonard Orban who will be the EU's first commissioner responsible for multilingualism.

Bulgarian candidate Meglena Kuneva, nominated to take up the post as EU commissioner for consumer protection, received 583 yes-votes, 21 against and 28 abstentions.

Kunveva has been Bulgarian minister for European affairs since 2002.

Each EU member state is entitled to having a representative in the European Commission, the bloc's executive body.

The parliament's support for Orban, Romania's secretary of state in the Ministry of European Affairs, came despite earlier doubts from Euro MPs about his portfolio's political power.

Orban's post was carved out of the portfolio of the bloc's culture and education commissioner.

But the Romanian commissioner designate has argued that multilingualism is a must in the EU as it forms part of its identity.

In addition to working on ensuring good communication inside the institutions and with EU citizens in different languages, Orban has said he wants to work on protecting minority languages and push for more language learning in schools.

The EU next year will adopt three new languages, Bulgarian, Romanian and Irish, raising the total number of the bloc's official languages to 23. // © 2006 DPA


Publication date: 12 December 2006   

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