EU bemoans lack of job applicants from Britain

(BRUSSELS) - European Union institutions, which together employ some 25,000 staff, are not attracting enough applicants from Britain, the European Commission said Monday.

"There is an under-representation of British citizens in entry exams for the European institutions," said European Commission spokesman Olivier Bailly, citing just five percent of nationals from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland taking up work in the EU.

However, Bailly denied a Financial Times report saying English-only exams could be introduced instead of the usual requirement to answer in one foreign language and demonstrate knowledge of a second.

"It would be simply illegal," Bailly stressed.

"Multi-lingualism is an indispensable skill," he added, while admitting that British Prime Minister David Cameron and commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso, a former Portuguese premier who usually works in French, had "committed one another to finding solutions."