Languages and multilingualism on the European agenda: European Schools as a case study

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the language policy of the European Union (hereafter, EU), which is applied in the case of European Schools (hereafter, ES). It is based on a case study conducted at postgraduate level. Our purposes were: a) to examine and analyse the official EU policy on language and multilingualism, b) to find similarities and differences between the official EU texts and the praxis followed in ES regarding language learning, and c) to explore the perceptions of ES teachers, emphasizing on the effectiveness of this model as far as language learning and multilingualism are concerned. The results of this study have shown that European Schools are considered effective in terms of teaching students their mother tongue while promoting foreign language acquisition. Moreover, certain measures and necessary changes are being discussed in order to have similar multilingual and multicultural school systems developed in modern societies.