French Language Drive
At some point, France’s desperate grasping for relavence just becomes rather pathetic:
France is launching a scheme to maintain the importance of French as a working language in the European Union (EU), in the face of a tide of new eastern European members who prefer to speak English.Paris, which will celebrate International Francophone Day tomorrow, is backing an ambitious plan to hold nearly 200 cultural and linguistic events in the 10 new EU member states. . . .
The move reflects concern that the EU – essentially a French creation, run along French administrative lines and with French as its main language – loses more of its Gallic flavour with each wave of entrants. . . .
Until 1995, French was the only language allowed at Commission press briefings, but today, signs of the dominance of English are everywhere. In 2002, 57 per cent of documents were first written in English, double the number drafted in French.
French diplomats in Barcelona in 2002 were dismayed when leaders from all the new member states spoke English at a summit dinner.
