In the frequent war of words there is another conflict, often fought underground; the war against words. Specifically euro-jargon, the stock phrases of the polished eurocrat, the language that makes an ordinary sentence sound like it’s strangling itself.

Stop the Jargon!

All places have their own jargon, but in the European Union it seems to have become so popular that it’ll soon be claiming the status of an official language. God help the poor interpreters when that happens. What mind thought the world needed words like ‘flexicurity’? How do you translate that into, say, Finnish?

There are always surprises with jargon. Here’s an interesting word; ‘toilettage’. It doesn’t mean what you think, in fact it’s far worse. Toilettage is the process of minutely examining new laws and treaties to make sure there’s no errors in translation and that they comply with existing legislation.

Can you think of a worse career to have than going through EU papers with a fine tooth comb all day, every day? We can only wonder what the suicide rate is amongst the lost souls who toil at toilettage.

E Sharp magazine publish an annual Jargon Alert guide to the bewildering phrases and acronyms that enlightens and entertains. How else can you explain the entry for ‘reasoned opinion’ that has the definition ’see infringement’. Elsewhere it gives us a handy definition for ‘constructive ambiguity’ as “A semi-official term in EU corridors of power, constructive ambiguity means phrasing an idea in such a vague way that no one is quite sure what is being said”. Semi-official? It sounds like the fundamental building block of the Union, the dark matter holding the whole thing together.

Some feel that the thoughtless use of jargon is seriously hampering the EU. Most importantly, the use of jargon distances the EU from the citizens who don’t understand the lingo and creates the impression of an almost cult like elite above and beyond the humble citizens. Behind the scenes it is understood that one of the reasons for the Irish voting against the Lisbon treaty was the treaty itself. Described as being “written in deliberately obscure language to obscure its similarities to the previously rejected constitution” by a Commission official who did not want to be named, the result was that those who tried to actually read the treaty found in impenetrable.

More embarrassingly, the Irish pro-treaty campaign found it equally obscure and were unable to explain it to the bewildered electorate. Can we really blame people for not voting for something they couldn’t understand? The Lisbon Treaty would have been much clearer if it had been written by James Joyce.

Of course, this is a little unfair, the size and complexity of the EU activities, or to put it in eurospeak, the modalities and modulations of multilateral cross-institutional implementation programmes, mean that some jargon is natural. What grates however, what makes people cringe is the sheer artlessness, the lack of grace, of elegance in the terms. In such a linguistically gifted continent, how do we end up with such awful terms and jargon?

It’s tempting to say that it’s just nuts, but in Euroland, nuts means, “The nomenclature of territorial units for statistics was created by Eurostat, the EU statistical office, in order to create a single and coherent structure for the management of the Structural Funds. Currently there are three NUTS levels”. You may be interested to learn that Germany is nuts level 1 and France and Italy are nuts level 3.

Jargon is a way of looking into the mindset of an organisation, do they twist and turn to the pat phrases of that modern day snake oil salesman, the American management guru, who has been advising so many recently bankrupt companies out of an institutional insecurity? Are they using language to obscure, to create an aura of knowledge and expertise shared by an elite? Or are they just dazed and confused? Unable to find a clearly marked exit into the land of coherence?

Perhaps the fightback has already started.The UK Local Government Association recently published a list of 100 words and phrases it wanted banning. These included coterminosity, improvement levers, process driven, and the mystifying term, predictors of beaconicity.

Perhaps it’s time for the EU to do likewise. Let’s help them, what jargon would you like to see banned?