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Federal Act
on the National Languages and
Understanding between the Linguistic Communities
(Languages Act, LangA)

English is not an official language of the Swiss Confederation. This translation is provided for information purposes only and has no legal force.

of 5 October 2007 (Status as 1 February 2021)

The Federal Assembly of the Swiss Confederation,

based on Articles 4, 18 and 70 of the Federal Constitution1,
having considered the report of the National Council Science, Education and Culture Committee dated 15 September 20062
and the report of the Federal Council dated 18 October 20063,

decrees:

Section 1 General Provisions

Art. 1 Subject matter  

This Act reg­u­lates:

a.
the use of the of­fi­cial lan­guages by the fed­er­al au­thor­it­ies and in deal­ings with them;
b.
the pro­mo­tion of un­der­stand­ing and ex­change between the lin­guist­ic com­munit­ies;
c.
sup­port for the pluri­lin­gual can­tons in ful­filling their spe­cif­ic tasks;
d.
sup­port for meas­ures by the can­tons of Graubünden and Ti­cino that be­ne­fit Ro­man­sh and Itali­an.
Art. 2 Aim  

By means of this Act, the Con­fed­er­a­tion in­tends:

a.
to strengthen quad­ri­lin­gual­ism as one of Switzer­land's fun­da­ment­al char­ac­ter­ist­ics;
b.
to con­sol­id­ate the in­tern­al co­he­sion of the coun­try;
c.
to en­cour­age in­di­vidu­al and in­sti­tu­tion­al pluri­lin­gual­ism in the na­tion­al lan­guages;
d.
to pre­serve and pro­mote Ro­man­sh and Itali­an as na­tion­al lan­guages.
Art. 3 Principles  

1 In ful­filling its tasks, the Con­fed­er­a­tion shall ob­serve the fol­low­ing prin­ciples in par­tic­u­lar:

a.
it shall en­sure that it treats the four na­tion­al Swiss lan­guages equally;
b.
it shall guar­an­tee and ap­ply lin­guist­ic free­dom in all its areas of activ­ity;
c.
it shall take ac­count of the tra­di­tion­al lin­guist­ic com­pos­i­tion of Switzer­land's re­gions;
d.
it shall pro­mote un­der­stand­ing between the lin­guist­ic com­munit­ies.

2 It shall work with the can­tons to ful­fil its tasks re­lat­ing to the policy on lan­guages and un­der­stand­ing between the lin­guist­ic com­munit­ies.

Section 2 Official Languages of the Confederation

Art. 4 Scope of application  

1 This sec­tion ap­plies to the fol­low­ing fed­er­al au­thor­it­ies:

a.
the Fed­er­al As­sembly and its or­gans;
b.
the Fed­er­al Coun­cil;
c.
the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­tra­tion un­der Art­icle 2 para­graphs 1–3 of the Gov­ern­ment and Ad­min­is­tra­tion Or­gan­isa­tion Act of 21 March 19974 (GAOO);
d.
the fed­er­al courts;
e.
the ex­tra-par­lia­ment­ary com­mit­tees of the Con­fed­er­a­tion.

2 Where the goals set out in this Act so re­quire, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may provide that:

a.
pro­vi­sions of this Sec­tion ap­ply to or­gan­isa­tions or per­sons un­der Art­icle 2 para­graph 4 GAOO that are en­trus­ted with ad­min­is­trat­ive tasks un­der fed­er­al law;
b.
the grant­ing of li­cences or as­sign­ments and the award of fin­an­cial as­sist­ance are made con­di­tion­al on com­ply­ing with the pro­vi­sions of this Sec­tion.
Art. 5 Official languages  

1 The of­fi­cial lan­guages of the Con­fed­er­a­tion are Ger­man, French and Itali­an. Ro­man­sh is an of­fi­cial lan­guage in deal­ings with per­sons who speak this lan­guage.

2 The fed­er­al au­thor­it­ies shall use the of­fi­cial lan­guages in their stand­ard forms.

Art. 6 Choice of language  

1 Any per­son deal­ing with a fed­er­al au­thor­ity may do so in the of­fi­cial lan­guage of their own choice.

2 The fed­er­al au­thor­it­ies shall an­swer in the of­fi­cial lan­guage in which they are ad­dressed. They may agree with per­sons who con­tact them to use a dif­fer­ent of­fi­cial lan­guage.

3 Per­sons who speak Ro­man­sh may ad­dress the fed­er­al au­thor­it­ies in its idioms or in Ru­mantsch Grischun. The au­thor­it­ies an­swer in Ru­mantsch Grischun.

4 The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may re­strict the free choice of of­fi­cial lan­guage for deal­ings with au­thor­it­ies whose activ­it­ies are lim­ited to a spe­cif­ic re­gion.

5 In deal­ings with per­sons who have no com­mand of an of­fi­cial lan­guage, the fed­er­al au­thor­it­ies shall if pos­sible use a lan­guage that these per­sons un­der­stand.

6 The spe­cial pro­vi­sions on the ad­min­is­tra­tion of fed­er­al justice are re­served.

Art. 7 Comprehensibility  

1 The fed­er­al au­thor­it­ies shall en­deav­our to en­sure that their lan­guage is ap­pro­pri­ate, clear and com­pre­hens­ible and shall en­sure that gender-ap­pro­pri­ate word­ing is used.

2 The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall take the meas­ures re­quired; in par­tic­u­lar, it shall ar­range for the ba­sic and ad­vanced train­ing of em­ploy­ees and the pro­vi­sion of the re­quired aids.5

5 The amend­ment in ac­cord­ance with the FA of 20 June 2014 on Con­tinu­ing Edu­ca­tion and Train­ing, in force since 1 Jan. 2017, relates to the French and Itali­an ver­sions only (AS 2016 689; BBl 20133729).

Art. 8 Federal Assembly  

1 In de­bates in the Fed­er­al As­sembly and its com­mit­tees, each mem­ber shall use a na­tion­al lan­guage of his or her choice.

2 Dis­patches, re­ports, draft le­gis­la­tion and re­quests must nor­mally be sub­mit­ted for con­sid­er­a­tion in the Fed­er­al As­sembly and its com­mit­tees in Ger­man, French and Itali­an.

Art. 9 Federal Council and Federal Administration  

1 The mem­bers of the Fed­er­al Coun­cil, the Fed­er­al Chan­cel­lor and Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­tra­tion staff shall work as they wish in Ger­man, French or Itali­an.

2 Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­tra­tion em­ploy­ers as defined in the le­gis­la­tion on fed­er­al per­son­nel shall make the re­quired aids avail­able.

Art. 10 Publications in German, French and Italian  

1 Fed­er­al en­act­ments and oth­er texts that must be pub­lished of­fi­cially in the Of­fi­cial or Clas­si­fied Com­pil­a­tions of Fed­er­al Le­gis­la­tion or in the Fed­er­al Gaz­ette in terms of the Pub­lic­a­tions Act of 18 June 20046 or based on oth­er fed­er­al law pro­vi­sions shall be pub­lished in Ger­man, French and Itali­an un­less the law provides oth­er­wise.7

2 Pub­lic­a­tion shall take place sim­ul­tan­eously in Ger­man, French and Itali­an.

6 SR 170.512

7 Amended by An­nex No 5 of the FA of 26 Sept. 2014, in force since 1 Jan. 2016 (AS 2015 3977; BBl 20137057).

Art. 11 Publications in Romansh  

Texts of par­tic­u­lar im­port­ance as well as the doc­u­ments for fed­er­al elec­tions and votes shall also be pub­lished in Ro­man­sh. The Fed­er­al Chan­cellery shall de­term­ine which texts are pub­lished after con­sult­ing the Chan­cellery of the Can­ton of Graubünden and the fed­er­al agen­cies con­cerned.

Art. 12 Communications, signs and identity documents  

1 The fed­er­al au­thor­it­ies shall use the loc­al of­fi­cial lan­guage for pub­lic com­mu­nic­a­tions.

2 The fed­er­al au­thor­it­ies shall com­mu­nic­ate with the pub­lic in the four of­fi­cial lan­guages, in par­tic­u­lar in the design:

a.
of its prin­ted mat­ter;
b.
of its in­ter­net home pages;
c.
in signs in its build­ings.

3 Per­son­al iden­tity doc­u­ments shall be is­sued in the four of­fi­cial lan­guages.

4 Fed­er­al forms in­ten­ded for the gen­er­al pub­lic must be made avail­able in all the of­fi­cial lan­guages. The fed­er­al au­thor­it­ies may al­low ex­cep­tions for forms in­ten­ded for a lim­ited group of per­sons.

Art. 13 International agreements  

1 An ori­gin­al ver­sion of bi­lat­er­al agree­ments that must be pub­lished must be made avail­able in at least one of­fi­cial lan­guage of the Con­fed­er­a­tion.

2 In the case of mul­ti­lat­er­al agree­ments that must be pub­lished, it must be en­sured that an ori­gin­al ver­sion in at least one of­fi­cial lan­guage of the Con­fed­er­a­tion is pro­duced.

3 Ex­cep­tions un­der Art­icle 14 para­graph 2 of the Pub­lic­a­tions Act of 18 June 20048 and spe­cial pro­vi­sions of fed­er­al le­gis­la­tion are re­served.

Section 3 Promoting Understanding and Exchange between the Linguistic Communities

Art. 14 Student exchange schemes  

1 The Con­fed­er­a­tion and the can­tons shall en­cour­age the ex­change of school stu­dents and teach­ers at all school levels.

2 The Con­fed­er­a­tion may grant fin­an­cial as­sist­ance to the can­tons and ex­change or­gan­isa­tions.

Art. 15 Teaching  

1 The Con­fed­er­a­tion and the can­tons shall, with­in the scope of their re­spons­ib­il­it­ies, en­sure that the teach­ing lan­guage, and in par­tic­u­lar its stand­ard form, is ac­cor­ded spe­cial at­ten­tion at all aca­dem­ic levels.

2 They shall, with­in the scope of their re­spons­ib­il­it­ies, en­cour­age pluri­lin­gual­ism among learners and teach­ers.

3 They shall, with­in the scope of their re­spons­ib­il­it­ies, be com­mit­ted to a sys­tem of teach­ing for­eign lan­guages that guar­an­tees that at the end of their com­puls­ory school­ing, stu­dents have skills in at least one second na­tion­al lan­guage and one oth­er for­eign lan­guage. The teach­ing of the na­tion­al lan­guages shall take ac­count of the cul­tur­al as­pects of a pluri­lin­gual coun­try.

Art. 16 Further measures to promote language skills  

The Con­fed­er­a­tion may grant fin­an­cial as­sist­ance to the can­tons to:

a.
de­vise the ba­sic re­quire­ments for the teach­ing of a second and third na­tion­al lan­guage;
b.
pro­mote skills in the loc­al na­tion­al lan­guage among those who speak a dif­fer­ent lan­guage;
c.
pro­mote the skills of those who speak a dif­fer­ent lan­guage in their own moth­er tongue.
Art. 17 Academic institution promoting plurilingualism  

In or­der to co­ordin­ate, in­tro­duce and con­duct ap­plied re­search on lan­guages and pluri­lin­gual­ism, the Con­fed­er­a­tion and the can­tons may sup­port an aca­dem­ic in­sti­tu­tion suit­able for this pur­pose.

Art. 18 Support for organisations  

The Con­fed­er­a­tion may grant fin­an­cial as­sist­ance to:

a.
news agen­cies of na­tion­al im­port­ance that re­port on the four lan­guage re­gions of the coun­try;
b.
non-profit-mak­ing or­gan­isa­tions and in­sti­tu­tions of na­tion­al im­port­ance that by their activ­it­ies pro­mote un­der­stand­ing in at least one lan­guage re­gion or carry out fun­da­ment­al work pro­mot­ing pluri­lin­gual­ism and pub­lish the res­ults;
c.
joint bod­ies that sup­port pro­jects that in­crease un­der­stand­ing between the lin­guist­ic com­munit­ies.
Art. 19 Financial assistance for translation work  

The Con­fed­er­a­tion may grant fin­an­cial as­sist­ance to non-profit-mak­ing or­gan­isa­tions and in­sti­tu­tions act­ive in Switzer­land for writ­ten trans­la­tions from one of­fi­cial Swiss lan­guage in­to the oth­ers.

Art. 20 Plurilingualism in public service  

1 The Con­fed­er­a­tion shall en­cour­age its em­ploy­ees to fur­ther their know­ledge of the na­tion­al lan­guages.

2 The Con­fed­er­a­tion shall en­sure that the lin­guist­ic com­munit­ies are fairly rep­res­en­ted in the fed­er­al au­thor­it­ies and ex­tra-par­lia­ment­ary com­mit­tees, and shall en­cour­age pluri­lin­gual­ism in the armed forces.

3 The Con­fed­er­a­tion and the can­tons shall make their ter­min­o­logy data­bases avail­able to each oth­er free of charge.

Section 4 Support for Plurilingual Cantons

Art. 21  

1 With­in the lim­its of the au­thor­ised cred­its, the Con­fed­er­a­tion shall grant the pluri­lin­gual can­tons fin­an­cial as­sist­ance so that they may per­form their spe­cif­ic tasks.

2 The can­tons of Bern, Fri­bourg, Graubünden and Val­ais are con­sidered to be pluri­lin­gual.

3 Spe­cif­ic tasks are in par­tic­u­lar:

a.
es­tab­lish­ing suit­able con­di­tions and aids for the pluri­lin­gual work in polit­ic­al au­thor­it­ies, the law en­force­ment and justice sys­tem, and ad­min­is­trat­ive au­thor­it­ies;
b.
en­cour­aging pluri­lin­gual­ism among learners and teach­ers in the of­fi­cial lan­guages of the can­ton at all aca­dem­ic levels.

Section 5 Preserving and Promoting the Romansh and Italian Languages and Cultures

Art. 22  

1 With­in the lim­its of the au­thor­ised cred­its, the Con­fed­er­a­tion shall grant the can­tons of Graubünden and Ti­cino fin­an­cial as­sist­ance to sup­port:

a.
meas­ures to pre­serve and pro­mote the Ro­man­sh and Itali­an lan­guages and cul­tures;
b.
or­gan­isa­tions and in­sti­tu­tions that ful­fil supra-re­gion­al re­spons­ib­il­it­ies to pre­serve and pro­mote the Ro­man­sh and Itali­an lan­guages and cul­tures;
c.
pub­lish­ing activ­it­ies in Ro­man­sh and Itali­an-speak­ing Switzer­land.

2 In or­der to pre­serve and pro­mote the Ro­man­sh lan­guage, the Con­fed­er­a­tion may sup­port meas­ures to sup­port the Ro­man­sh me­dia.

3 Fed­er­al fin­an­cial as­sist­ance shall amount to a max­im­um of 75 per cent of the over­all costs.

Section 6 Implementation and Evaluation

Art. 23 Granting of financial assistance  

1 The Con­fed­er­a­tion shall grant fin­an­cial as­sist­ance in re­sponse to an ap­plic­a­tion. Ap­plic­a­tions must provide in­form­a­tion on the in­ten­ded meas­ures and in­clude a fund­ing plan.

2 The Con­fed­er­a­tion shall grant fin­an­cial as­sist­ance in the form of a pub­lic ser­vice agree­ment or a rul­ing. If pos­sible, pub­lic ser­vice agree­ments shall be entered in­to for a term of sev­er­al years.

Art. 24 Prohibition of multiple grants  

Mul­tiple grants of fin­an­cial as­sist­ance un­der this Act are not per­mit­ted.

Art. 25 Reporting, evaluation and statistics 9  

1 The can­tons, or­gan­isa­tions and in­sti­tu­tions shall sub­mit reg­u­lar re­ports to the Con­fed­er­a­tion on the use of fin­an­cial as­sist­ance grants.

2 The Con­fed­er­a­tion shall reg­u­larly re­view the util­ity and ef­fect­ive­ness of the meas­ures.

3 It shall with the as­sist­ance of the can­tons com­pile stat­ist­ics on stu­dent ex­change schemes un­der Art­icle 14. The can­tons shall provide the Con­fed­er­a­tion with the re­quired data in a stand­ard­ised form.10

9 Amended by No I of the FA of 25 Sept. 2020, in force since 1 Feb. 2021 (AS 2021 48; BBl 2020 3131).

10 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 25 Sept. 2020, in force since 1 Feb. 2021 (AS 2021 48; BBl 2020 3131).

Section 7 Final Provisions

Art. 26 Repeal and amendment of existing legislation  

The re­peal and amend­ment of the ex­ist­ing le­gis­la­tion are reg­u­lated in the An­nex.

Art. 27 Referendum and commencement  

1 This Act is sub­ject to an op­tion­al ref­er­en­dum.

2 The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine the com­mence­ment date.

Com­mence­ment date:11 1 Janu­ary 2010
Num­ber I of the An­nex comes in­to force at the same time as the Lan­guages Or­din­ance.

11 FCD of 4 Dec. 2009.

Annex

(Art. 26)

Repeal and amendment of current legislation

I

The Federal Act of 6 October 199512 on Financial Assistance for the Preservation and Promotion of the Romansh and Italian Languages and Cultures is repealed.

II

The following federal acts are amended as follows:

13

12 [AS 1996 22802514]

13 The amendments may be consulted under AS 2009 6605

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