EFSA’s website is now available in Spanish, one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. The addition of Spanish means that all EFSA’s essential information, news stories and background materials are accessible in five languages – the content is already available in English, French, German and Italian.

The launch of a Spanish version of the website marks the beginning of the gradual introduction of full EU-24 multilingualism to EFSA’s communications.

In addition to the 46 million citizens of Spain, there are around 400 million Spanish native speakers in the word. After Mandarin Chinese, Hindustani and English, Spanish is the most widely spoken language in the world.

As well as broadening the reach of EFSA’s communications, the addition of Spanish is also a response to the new European Transparency Regulation, which emphasises the need for EFSA and other EU bodies to be as clear and accessible as possible when communicating with the general public.

EFSA Linguistic Services worked hand in hand with the Translation Centre for the Bodies of the European Union (CdT), which translated a wide selection of the most popular EFSA web pages.

Basic information about EFSA is already available in all the official EU languages in EFSA’s Corporate Brochure “Science protecting consumers from field to fork”. The document is available on the EFSA website as well as on the EU Bookshop website. All EFSA vacancy notices for recruiting staff are available in all 24 EU official languages.

English, as the EU lingua franca, remains the main language used for all EFSA communications externally and in-house.

EFSA is a forward-looking organisation keen to have a state-of-the-art approach to communications, one of the main pillars of its mandate. To pursue this goal, EFSA is planning to avail itself of new technologies such artificial intelligence and automated translation in its current and future approach to multilingualism.