Leonard Orban

Who is Leonard Orban?

Leonard Orban is a Romanian independent technocrat who served as the Commissioner for Multilingualism in the European Commission, the executive body of the European Union. He was responsible for the EU language policy and was the first Romanian Commissioner and the first member of the Commission whose portfolio is exclusively multilingualism. His term of office began on 1 January 2007 and ended on 9 February 2010. With a background in engineering and economics, Orban has taken up various posts working for the accession of Romania to the European Union, most prominently as Deputy and later as Chief Negotiator for his country at the time of final negotiations with the European Union.

Steering the multilingualism language policy of the EU, Orban focused on promoting foreign language learning through EU programmes such as the Lifelong Learning Programme 2007–2013. In addition, his remit also included the effective functioning of the EU's extensive interpretation, translation and publication services in the 23 official languages. To support the remit of his portfolio, Orban oversaw a staff of 3,400 in total and approximately 1 per cent of the EU budget.