Against the background of the too often reiterated criticism of the unintelligibility of official EU texts, the present study sets out to analyze the main causes for opacity in EU documents. In order to do so, it presents a series of examples drawn from official documents written in several languages, and tries to discern those elements of ambiguity which seem to be peculiar to the experience of the European Union. In the second part of the article, a series of possible reasons for such a lack of clarity are examined; whereas some of them are seen to be linked to the political nature of the texts, others depend rather more on subjective features. The third part deals with some of the strategies - along with the reasons for their success or failure - put into practice at an official level and by the EU linguistic services themselves, with the aim of promoting more clarity in EU texts. Finally, the study examines the possible role of translators in helping to improve the readability of texts, not only translated but also original.
