Finland, which will assume the EU presidency on July 1, will use for communication English and French, but not German.
During its presidency Finland will have two official websites - one in English (www.eu2006.fi) and one in French (www.ue2006.fi), even though more than 90 million speaks German, making it the second most widely understood language in the EU.
"As we are not even using Finnish and Swedish, we have started from the premise that nobody should have reason to complain," said Mikko Norros, the press counsellor at the Finnish embassy in Brussels.
According to him if the website was to be published in German, the language selection would have to include the domestic languages as well. This, Norros said, was not in line with their intention to keep the website as small as possible.