Multilingualism, Linguistic Justice and the EU Communication Deficit on Social Media

This article examines multilingualism on Twitter/X among EU institutions, bodies and agencies using a dataset of nearly 400,000 tweets from corporate accounts, Commissioners and Presidents of European institutions. Employing advanced language detection tools, it assesses how far EU communication reflects its stated commitment to multilingualism and relates these practices to the language competences of EU residents. The findings indicate a strong dominance of English across most institutional actors. A notable exception is the European Parliament, which implements dedicated language-specific accounts, enabling communication in all EU languages. In contrast, most other institutions rely predominantly on English, suggesting a de facto monolingual approach. This pattern may partly reflect communication to differing target audiences: the Parliament addresses national publics directly, while other institutions communicate mainly with intermediaries such as journalists and professionals. However, English-only communication limits accessibility, as only a minority of EU citizens have sufficient proficiency. These findings raise questions of linguistic justice and the reach of institutional communication concerned with participation and legitimacy.