from a google search on language regime European parliament:
a thesis on the EU language regime (addresses both translation and interpretation) Quotes follow from this thesis:
"The Interpreting Directorate of the European Parliament employs approximately 240 permanent staff interpreters and relies on a reserve of more than 1000 auxiliary conference interpreters, of whom between 200 and 500 must be recruited each day to cover its needs. In 2002, the total volume of activity represented 56000 interpreter days for the European Parliament organs alone. Staff interpreters accounted for ± 50% of these working days, the remainder being provided by auxiliary conference interpreters. (Europa: Gateway to the European Union)"
"According to the official website of the European Commission, in 2004, the twenty official languages of the European Union are: Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish and Swedish (Europa: Gateway to the European Union). The website provides elaborate information and detailed figures on the official languages in 199815, indicating the weight and importance of each language according to various data and inquiries."
Somewhere, this person got the idea that Esperanto is being used by many people within the EU institutions. Maybe I was in the wrong places or talking to the wrong people to find this out? People whom I met that were completely unassociated with the EU and interpreting would sometimes ask me about Esperanto when they found out what I was doing, but the word never arose in any of the fieldwork.
a few other tidbits:
recognition of all languages with official status in Spain
community patent got several hits regarding translation (not interpretation)
http://www.europarl.eu.int/oeil/file.jsp?id=198752
http://www.european-patent-office.org/news/pressrel/2003_11_27_e.htm
Perhaps they thought Esperanto was in use because they saw just how active the Esperanto movement is in pitching Esperanto as the sole language to be used in all international contexts. The movement says it would be good for "language diversity", but that's a facade. See my essay (at my website under "Writings") where I explain my reasons for leaving the movement after ten years because of this dishonesty and cult-like secret fanaticism. Anyway, perhaps people think that if World Esperanto Association is so ceaselessly proposing Esperanto, then they must be getting some kind of results. In reality, Esperanto is being completely ignored in the EU, and while the Council of Europe funds many Esperanto activities--I used to be the one who did the funding requests in 2001-2002 and you'd be amazed how much taxpayer money is wasted on this made-up language--the CoE could probably care less about the language in the long term.