The English are out, let the French prosper. No, it’s not a call from the modern history ages when France and Britain vied for dominance across the globe. This is the summation of the rant of a French MEP who wants the English language out of the European Union.
France has the ambition to present itself as the most powerful state in the European Union. With Brexit, the English are gone but their language remains, and it is one of the two hurdles blocking France from achieving its goal of total dominance, the other is the Germans. Macron is ambitious and he believes that France can achieve its goal of total dominance in the European Union as he will remain one of the strongest leaders after Angela Merkel steps down. While the German hindrance will take care of itself it’s the hurdle of an English dominated EU that France is now chipping away at.
French MEP France Jamet ordered the European Commission, in an unbelievable outburst, to abandon the ‘Gradual Linguistic Levelling’ in favour of English. While English is one of the world’s most commonly spoken languages, Ms Jamet has been calling for it to be dropped now that the UK has left the EU. She reported in a query to the Commission on 18 January that the EU had now forgotten French as one of its officially recognized languages.
Ms Jamet said: “Despite the departure of the United Kingdom, English remains the language of the EU, worse, the European institutions are expanding its influence.”
Despite the scale of the financial districts in both the United Kingdom and the United States, she directed the Commission to put an end to the supremacy of English over EU institutions.
She said: “If the foreign exchange reserve operations only concern an admittedly limited part of the activities of the European bank, the fact remains that Europe thus formalizes a gradual linguistic levelling in favour of English.
On a rant, she continued “We will also notice that European texts are translated less and less or more and more late, that interpreters are less available during debates, and that the EU seems to no longer recognize French as one of its official languages. Does the Commission intend to uphold the EU’s motto ‘united in diversity’ and finally put an end to an attitude which allows English to take over the functioning of the European institutions in a hegemonic way?”
French politicians have long pushed for the removal of English as the dominant language in the European Bloc. France’s EU affairs minister, Clement Beaune, reiterated the desire to drop “broken English” from the EU now the UK has left the bloc.
Despite Britain not being part of the EU anymore, English is still the most spoken language in the Bloc. As already mentioned, the US and UK are one of the biggest financial districts in the world and the EU still needs better ties with both the English-speaking states.
Thus, this begs the question of why French MEP, France Jamet would go on such a long rant over the use of the English language in the European Union. Well, the reason is a vision for French dominance in the EU and language will play a big part in it.
French is the third most spoken language in the European Union, an official language in 29 states all over the world especially in Africa and is one of the six primary languages of the United Nations.
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Mass immigration from Africa into Europe has raised the number of French-speaking people in Europe. African nations are predominantly French-speaking and as they have been flocking to Europe due to unrestricted immigration policies, the number of people who speak French is rising rapidly. It is also estimated that by 2050, French will be spoken by about 750 million people worldwide.
Unsurprisingly, getting the French language to a newer and far greater level is also a favourite topic for French President Emmanuel Macron who insists that EU’s new leadership should be comprised of mainly of French speakers.
In the past few months, France has become a beacon of EU’s progressive policies in line with the contemporary situation in the international arena. It is emerging as a leader in Europe and the propagation and rejuvenation of the French language will lead to French dominance in the European Union.