French and English in the EU

[Harold F. Schiffman]

		The French language meets its Waterloo

                Ian Black in Brussels
                Wednesday March 20, 2002
                     The Guardian

Enlarging the EU is good news for the English language, confirming its
victory over French as the classic medium of European integration.
Adding to the woes of the French, who fear an Anglo-Saxon plot to get the
top jobs in Brussels and liberalise protected markets, a new survey shows
that the language of Shakespeare is more popular than that of Molire in
the candidate countries for union membership.

                             According to the European commission's
polling arm, Eurobarometer, 86% of people in the 13 countries applying to
join regard English as one of the two most useful languages to speak.
German is favoured by 58% per cent, largely in central and eastern Europe,
and French by a paltry 17%.  Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic,
Slovenia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia, Cyprus and Malta are
expected to join the EU in an unprecedented "big bang"  in the next two to
three years.  Bulgaria and Romania, whose economies are less developed,
are likely to take longer.  Turkey, the only one of the 13 not to have
begun the complex accession negotiations, may never make it.

                             "After years of armchair speculation about
what the linguistic map of Europe will look like after enlargement, this
survey is the answer," commission official said.  "It spells the end of a
rearguard action to preserve French as the dominant working language."
English is the most-spoken foreign language in the candidate countries,
scoring 16% compared with 14% for Russian, 10% for German and 4% for
French.  The linguistic preferences reflect the fact that historically
France has played little part in the outer countries of Europe compared
with its role in the original six members of the EU's earlier
manifestation, European Economic Community.

                             Romania has most citizens who speak French as
a second language, though there too, English is considered far more
useful.  Cyprus and Malta, both former British colonies, are special
cases, where 57% and 84% respectively speak English as a second language.
Every new EU member's language is officially recognised, so within a few
years there will be 10 more to add to the existing 11, with a question
mark over whether Turkish will be required for Cyprus.

                             French dominated the European project from
the 1950s until the 1980s but was set back when Finland, Austria and
Sweden joined in 1995, and has suffered further from English's dominance
on the internet. Today, two-thirds of commission documents are written in
English.