Just hours after Finland took over the presidency of the EU, Helsinki refused to allow German to be used as a working language at informal ministerial meetings during its six-month term.

"The member states usually comply with these practices as they stand so I don't know what arguments are now used by the Germans to complain," said Mr Santer, himself a French- and German-speaking native of Luxembourg.

Two official languages

English and French are traditionally used at meetings along with the language of the country that holds the rotating presidency.

But for the last 12 months the presidency has been held by Austria and then Germany, so German was used as a third language.

Chancellor Schröder: complained

Bonn stayed away from the first ministerial meeting under the Finnish EU presidency on Friday in protest at Finland's failure to provide German translation facilities.

It was later joined by Austria which has also boycotted the meeting.

Florian Krenkel, the Austrian foreign ministry spokesman, said he hoped Finland would revise its policy on language use at the meetings.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has written to Finland's Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen to try to persuade him to add German to the list.

"Mr Schröder's letter is very clear," a spokesman for the economics ministry in Bonn said.

"If there is translation into German then we will go. If not, then we will not."

Setting a precedent

Mr Lipponen has refused to give in, arguing that if one language were to get a favoured position then others would ask for similar treatment.

And Jacques Santer pointed out that there are 178 possible different language combinations at EU meetings.

The Finnish government points out that Spanish and Italian are spoken much more widely worldwide than German.

Prime Minister Lipponen: refused to give way

German, on the other hand, is the first language of 90 million citizens in the 15 EU member states - almost a quarter of the 370 million people in the union.

Helmut Haussmann, former German Minister for Europe and now European policy spokesman for the opposition Liberal Democrats (FDP), called the Finnish stance a "scandal".

English and French are the official working languages of the EU, but since its unification in 1990, Germany has been trying to change the status quo.

German has been used at all meetings during the past 12 months, when Austria and Germany held the presidency.

German diplomats in Brussels say that German was also used during the past presidencies of Britain, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.

They have rejected Finland's position that it would create technical problems and extra costs to have German as an informal working language.

A Finnish official characterised the row as "unnecessary" - Finland had nothing against the German language.

Another was clearly unhappy about the shaky start to his country's first stint at the helm of the EU.

"We knew it was going to be tough, but we did not know it would be like this," he said.