Translation errors in EU law can have major legal and economic consequences, as highlighted by a recent case brought before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).

The EU Block Exemption Regulation (GBER) exempts certain categories of State aid from the standard notification and approval process, so as to allow Member States to disburse aid without prior European Commission approval. However, when the GBER was translated into Romanian, an error changed the definition of an “undertaking in difficulty”: the phrase “in existence for less than three years” was mistranslated as “in existence for at least three years”, thus expanding eligibility for aid beyond the intended period.

As a result, companies that would not have qualified for State aid under the correct versions of the regulation received financial grants from the Romanian government. When the mistake was corrected in 2021, those grants were withdrawn, causing unexpected losses and legal uncertainty for their recipients. The affected businesses challenged Romanian officials’ attempt to reclaim the funds, arguing that they had qualified for aid according to the officially published criteria, that retroactive application of the corrected regulation would unfairly penalize them, and that their reliance on the uncorrected text was reasonable and protected by the principles of legal certainty and legitimate expectations.

The dispute was referred by the Court of Appeal in Bacău to the CJEU for a preliminary ruling, posing preliminary questions pertaining to the retroactive effect of the correcting regulation and its implications for recovery of aid.

In May 2025, Advocate General Szpunar delivered his opinion, which is significant for translators, legal experts, and anyone working in multilingual regulatory environments. He reaffirmed the key principle by which EU legislation is enforceable only as published in the official language of the relevant Member State, and placed limits on the retroactivity of correction: if individuals or companies rely in good faith on a regulation as it appears in their language, he argued, they are entitled to protection, even if an error is later detected. 

Szpunar also explicitly rejected the idea that citizens must cross-check other language versions for potential translation mistakes. Altogether, a major implication of his opinion is that translation professionals play a vital role in upholding legal certainty, but the EU institutions that commission their translation also bear responsibility for ensuring the accuracy of official texts. 

The CJEU ruling will set further guidelines and precedent. For the time being, the Advocate General’s opinion is a reminder of the importance of ensuring accurate legal translation not only for the sake of accuracy itself, but also to protect fairness and legal certainty.