The European Union’s Council of Ministers meets in 10 different compositions depending on the topic in question. The Presidency of the Council rotates amongst the EU’s Member States every six months. Finland held the Presidency of the Council for the second half of 2019. During Finland’s Presidency, 131 international EU-level meetings were held in Finland along with a large number of meetings held by various organisations.

During Finland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2019, LanguageWire's (formerly Delingua's) conference interpreters worked at various conferences with language needs ranging from two language pairs to tens of language pairs.

Delingua (now LanguageWire) was selected as the conference interpreting service provider for several meetings held during Finland’s Presidency. Our professional interpreters, who regularly work with the EU’s administrative bodies, provided interpreting services in meetings hosted by the Finnish Parliament, the Finnish Government, various government ministries, the European Economic and Social Committee and the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, for example.

Parliamentary meetings

A total of seven parliamentary meetings were organised at the Finnish Parliament during Finland’s EU Presidency, with more than 1,000 parliamentarians attending the meetings. Examples of the topics of the parliamentary meetings include asylum and migration, climate change and agriculture.

Delingua’s (now LanguageWire's) interpreting services unit assembled and coordinated the interpreter teams. The coordination efforts included the selection of the right interpreters and familiarising them with the topic where necessary, collecting preparatory materials and supplying the interpreters with these materials, handling the interpreters’ travel and accommodation arrangements as necessary, managing the interpreters’ contracts and access passes, ensuring the appropriate working conditions and interpretation technology as well as taking care of the practical arrangements of events and conducting quality assurance on site.