Multilingual Norms in European Criminal Law

European Union law is equally authentic in all official languages of the European Union. The European Court of Justice has reiterated this principle many times, although it is hardly practical. Noting that even the European Court of Justice struggles with the amount of authentic versions for a single legal instrument, we may doubt that the practitioners at the level of the member states possess the resources or the capabilities to actualize a truly multilingual legal system. The ordinary citizen with potentially less education than the judges at the European Court of Justice finds himself in an even worse position. While he may only understand a single version, he may nevertheless face criminal punishment for not abiding by European Union law as it is established on the basis of all official language versions. Multilingualism poses a problem for legal certainty, particularly but not only in the field of criminal law. The ordinary citizen should not be held responsible for violating a law that he does not understand. But the ECJ has yet to recognise such a right. I will argue in the following that minor adjustments to current legal doctrine suffice to rectify this problem, without abandoning equal authenticity of all official languages as the basis for European legal interpretation.