The author discusses the language policies of the institutions of the European Union. The key term here is “multilingualism”. Since the EU institutions are mandated by law to interact with European citizens in their own national languages, translation plays an essential role in fulfilling this mandate. However, the author argues, “multilingualism” cannot be limited to translation policies. It also involves other issues such as the status of Europe’s non-national languages, Europe’s lingua francas, and foreign language learning. The debates about languages and translation in the media are often technical and/or ill-informed, but they involve legal, political and ideological issues which need to be addressed openly in order to avoid any inter-cultural conflicts.