Europe talks to itself in many languages. That’s why English is vital to its democracy | Timothy Garton Ash

English is still the continent's most widely used language - and the Guardian's new digital Europe edition is a major addition to the Eurosphere

How can anyone govern a country with 246 different kinds of cheese?" Charles de Gaulle, the founding president of France's Fifth Republic, is said to have asked. As it prepares for European elections next year, the European Union faces an even bigger challenge: how to run a multinational democratic community with 24 official languages. And remember that the union is gearing up for a decade of enlargement, potentially including Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia as well as six countries in the western Balkans, which would take the official language tally closer to 30. In Europe at large, there's an even greater diversity of languages - somewhere between 64 and 234, according to one expert.

This matters. Politics is also theatre. Politicians are actors, as we watch them on the national and international stage". And democracy is meant to involve people deliberating with each other. What if you can't understand a word they say?

Timothy Garton Ash is a Guardian columnist