ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the written texts, as signs, and explores issues of power, control and transparency on the basis of what they say, as indicators. The European Union' (EU) has become an important sign in modern European life. The European Union has been constructed using legal texts, in the form of primary treaties supplemented with a plethora of other acts and instruments. It expresses the will of the member states and the institutions they have created to work together in peaceful and orderly cooperation, for the benefit of all. Each domain has a power balance, negotiated in the texts, and the exercise of all the EU tasks is subject to constant monitoring and control by the participants to ensure that the law is complied with. This linguistic equality, or balance in linguistic power, is supported by extensive arrangements to provide for language interpretation and translation.
