Is there a (EU) law that a written contract has to be in a certain language?

Question

I live and work as a freelancer in country A. I am about to sign a contract with a company that has its offices in country B. They therefore insist on having the contract written in language B.

Both A and B are in the EU.

Would having the contract only written in language B be a problem for the various institutions (e.g., fiscal/tax) from my country A to whom I may have to show the contract in case a government audit comes? If the worst that can happen is that they make me pay for a translation that would be absolutely fine.

In other words, is there a law against having written contracts in other languages?

(Of course, I could make a bilingual contract, but this would really delay sealing this deal and I'm keen on getting this signed very soon, so doing a bilingual contract only comes into question if I definitely know I'll expose myself to significant legal risk by having it only in language B.)

Answer 1

I am not in the EU, and it may depend a bit from country-to-country, but the this link the language is not regulated, and you can choose the country whose legal provisions you prefer if you don't like/know the laws of one of the countries.

From a general POV, for the most part, a contract does not necessarily even need to be in writing, writing simply records the intent of the parties in event of a later dispute. If you use this as a guiding principle, it would seem that the language is irrelevant except in the case of a dispute where the agreement rests on specific meaning of the words if they are difficult to exactly translate.