The coronavirus has cut clarity and boosted babble in the Brussels bubble.

The pandemic has drastically reduced the amount of interpreting offered by EU institutions. That has led to the cancelation of freelance interpreters’ contracts and left officials struggling to express themselves.

A couple of weeks ago, Sandra Pereira, a Portuguese far-left MEP, told a meeting of the European Parliament’s industry committee she “regretted” that she could not speak in her native language “in a moment when translators and interpreters are being dismissed.”

At a meeting of the Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, David McAllister, the chairman, asked MEPs to “speak in their mother tongue if it is one of the languages for which interpretation is available.” He later begged one MEP to “speak in English because the interpreters are no longer here.”

Despite social distancing and travel bans, the Parliament says it has now managed to provide interpretation in all 24 EU languages for sessions of the full assembly. Gaelic and Maltese could not be provided initially because freelance interpreters for those languages were unable to travel to Brussels.

But it’s a different story for the Parliament’s committee meetings, where only eight languages are available per room and there is only one interpreter per cabin, rather than two or three.

Linguists are also using an app called Interactio to provide simultaneous interpreting for online meetings. “But interpreters need to see the person who speaks for real,” said one interpreter, who declined to be named for this article due to strict confidentiality rules around their work. “In those meetings, we lose the context, and the level of concentration that is required enhances our fatigue.”

“It becomes harder for us to decode the message of the speaker,” the interpreter added.

Meetings at the other main institutions, the Commission and the Council, have been severely cut back, meaning much less work for interpreters.

That has been particularly painful for the pool of 1,200 freelancers who carry out half of the EU institutions’ simultaneous interpretation. Many commute back and forth to Brussels and found themselves stranded in their home countries and unsure about when they will work again.

They fear that if meetings don’t get back to normal anytime soon, all freelance contracts will be canceled, and the EU will be unable to properly function with its 24 official languages.

“We are confined all over Europe with no job,” said another interpreter. “We are wondering: Are meetings going to resume before summer?”

The EU institutions employ 800 interpreters on permanent contracts and 3,200 freelance interpreters, of whom 1,200 have regular contracts, according to data from official figures and a Parliament spokesperson. Many freelance interpreters work in all three main EU institutions, plus others like the Court of Justice.

But the measures introduced to curb the spread of the coronavirus — such as reducing the number of physical meetings, imposing strict social distancing and resorting to online gatherings with minimal interpretation — meant suddenly there was much less work to go around.

Institutions stopped employing freelance interpreters, working on both short and long-term contracts.

The Parliament canceled freelance contracts for the last week of May onwards but paid fees for March and April. (Under EU rules, institutions must cancel contracts 60 days in advance to avoid paying in full.)

Terry Reintke, a German MEP from the Greens, urged the Parliament to find ways to help interpreters through the crisis.

“Interpreters guarantee the EU’s multilingualism and are vital to maintain the work and functionality of the institutions,” said Reintke, who has written a letter with several colleagues to Parliament President David Sassoli to raise the issue. “It is clearly the responsibility of the European Parliament to care about their freelance interpreters as they are not covered by national measures.”

Alexandra Geese, another German Green MEP who previously worked as an interpreter for the EU, said many of her former freelance colleagues “are not covered by any kind of social security in any country.”

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She said Parliament is planning to offer “some kind of advance payment” but the EU needs to do more.

“EU institutions should be ashamed. They say ‘we need EU solidarity’ but these people don’t get any solidarity,” she said.

Out of Commission

The European Commission is one of the biggest employers of EU interpreters. It provides interpretation for about 40 to 50 meetings a day in normal times, according to a spokesperson.

Right now, the Commission is providing interpreting for about five physical meetings per day, the spokesperson said. In addition, Commission linguists are interpreting for videoconferences, such as an international pledging event to combat the coronavirus held this month.

Over at the Council of the EU, interpreting has been “partially provided” at meetings of ambassadors, according to a Council official. Ministers meeting via videoconference have had to get by without any interpreting provided by the Council, the official said.

Even the most recent videoconference of EU leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel took place without the Council providing interpretation.

In an effort to resolve their problems, freelance interpreters met online with the three EU institutions last month. A similar meeting is planned for the end of May.

So far, as befits their profession, the interpreters seem confident that clear communication holds the key to getting things back on track.

“We are dealing with institutions through social dialogue,” said a statement signed by their negotiating team following the meeting on April 24. “There is no doubt that those problems will be solved, as always in the history of the EU.”

Aitor Hernández-Morales and David M. Herszenhorn contributed reporting.