The language of Europe is plurilingualism. There is no alternative
The former Commissioner for Education and Multilingualism, Androulla Vassilliou, liked to say that plurilingualism was in Europe's DNA. And she was right.
You only have to read some of the articles of the founding regulation adopted unanimously by the members under the Treaty of Rome, Regulation No. 1 of 1958, to be convinced of this.
Article 2
Texts sent to the institutions by a Member State or by a person subject to the jurisdiction of a Member State shall be drafted, at the choice of the sender, in one of the official languages The reply shall be in the same language.
Article 3
Texts addressed by the institutions to a Member State or to a person subject to the jurisdiction of a Member State shall be drafted in the language of that State
Article 4
Regulations and other texts of general application shall be drawn up in the four official languages
Article 5
The Official Journal of the European Union shall be published in the four official languages
At the time, there were 4 official languages: German, French, Italian and Dutch. Following successive enlargements, the number of official languages was increased and the two "four official languages" became "the official languages".
Articles 4 and 5 are worded in exactly the same way. In Article 5, it is unambiguously understood that "the official languages" means "all the official languages", which implies that the Official Journal appears in all the official languages at the same time.
As regards Article 4, for practical reasons, it is understood that not all texts can be drafted in all languages during the drafting phase, but at the very least that all the official languages are intended to be used as drafting languages.
In fact, in 1970 the split between French and German was 60%-40%, and in the early 1990s French and English were more or less equal, while German, at 9%, had lost out to English.1 Today, English is between 80 and 85%, French around 3%, German and the other languages less than 10%. The major shift took place between 1995 and 2005, when 10 new countries from the former Warsaw bloc joined the EU. The slope since 2005 is merely asymptotic. In other words, monolingualism has firmly established itself in all the institutional interstices, a vast grey area where plurilingualism is not guaranteed.
Other texts have subsequently reinforced institutional plurilingualism, without changing practices.
The Charter of Fundamental Rights adopted at the Nice European Council on 7 December 2000 contains two important articles.
Firstly, Article 21 prohibits all forms of discrimination, including discrimination based on language. And Article 22 proclaims that "the Union shall respect cultural, religious and linguistic diversity".
Finally, the Treaty of Lisbon (30 March 2010) on the European Union introduces new elements that are well worth knowing. Article 10(3) proclaims that Every citizen has the right to participate in the democratic life of the Union. And Article 11(3) states that in order to ensure the consistency and transparency of the Union's actions, the European Commission shall undertake broad consultations of the parties concerned.
As might be expected, in the first few years of implementation, consultations were mainly conducted in English.
In 2016, the OEP wrote to Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker asking for clarification. In an e-mail dated 11 August 2016, a Commission head of unit replied: "That said, the Commission recognises the importance of consultations in improving its policies and, as requested by the European Parliament and the Ombudsman, is endeavouring to make available as many translations as possible of as many consultations as possible".
In 2019, nothing had changed. The Ombudsman launched an investigation2 to which the OEP responded by raising the issue again.
Doing its duty as an NGO, in 2019 the OEP reminded the General Secretariat of the Commission and that of the Council of the European Union, insisting on the manifestly contrary nature of the Treaty and the legitimacy of a judicial remedy.
In July 2021, the European Parliament took up the subject in the more general context of an important resolution of 7 July 2021 on "citizens' dialogues and citizens' participation in EU decision-making3 . On the basis of Articles 10 and 11 of the EU Treaty, it strongly reiterated "the right of citizens to have access to reliable, independent and factual information about the European Union, its policies and its decision-making processes, and that this right implies the need to provide for diversified access to a common European news centre which is neutral and independent, designed to provide information and accessible in all the official languages of the Union".
In order to properly assess the scope of this subject under debate, it is necessary firstly to examine what is meant by an official language and secondly to identify the opposing views on language.
Official language
Under the Roman Empire, Latin was not designated as an official language, but Emperor Caracalla's Edict of 212 AD granted Roman citizenship to all free men in the Empire, without specifying the status of Latin. However, Latin was the language of administration, and civil servants were required to master it. Latin was therefore de facto the official language of the Empire.
In France, the Royal Decree of Villers-Cotterêts of 1539, as well as being the oldest law in French law that is still legally active, can be considered the text that established French, which had not yet been formalised grammatically, as the official language of the kingdom. It should be noted in passing that, contrary to widespread belief, the extent of French did not correspond to the limits of the kingdom, and French was present in Europe from Great Britain to Palestine.
Articles 110 and 111 of the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts state the following:
Article 110 And so that there is no reason to doubt the understanding of the said rulings, we wish and order that they be made and written so clearly that there is no ambiguity or uncertainty giving rise to a request for interpretation. Article 111 And in view of the fact that such things have often occurred as a result of the understanding of the Latin words contained in the said rulings, from now on we wish all rulings, together with all other proceedings, whether of our sovereign courts or other subordinate and inferior courts, whether of registers, enquiries, contracts, commissions, sentences, wills, and any other acts and exploits of justice, or which depend on them, to be pronounced, registered and delivered to the parties in the mother tongue of French and not otherwise.
Two very modern principles emerge from these two articles. Firstly, there is the principle of clarity with regard to legal texts and, more generally, the language used by the administration. This principle, which exists in some legislation, can be linked to the principles of accessibility and transparency mentioned above. In addition to these principles, article 111 lays down a principle, which will be found in the Civil Code (article 111-2), aimed at preventing possible difficulties or conflicts of interpretation. There is no doubt that these principles have retained their relevance. Present in various legislations, they are now the subject of the ISO 24495-1:2023 standard.
A much earlier event than the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts may well herald the modern idea of an official language. It was the Strasbourg oaths of 842, which sealed the alliance between Charlemagne's two grandsons, Louis the German and Charles the Bald4 , against their brother Lothaire. This event preceded by a few months the Treaty of Verdun of August 843, by which Charlemagne's three grandsons divided the Carolingian Empire into three parts: Charles received West Francia, from which France was born, Lothaire Middle Francia from Italy to Friesland, and Louis East Francia, which was to form the nucleus of the future Roman-German Empire. What is worth emphasising here, and is linked to the notion of an official language, is the symbolism inspired by Nithard at a time when the political entities had not yet been constituted and the future entities that would result from the Treaty of Verdun and the other treaties that followed had no linguistic coherence. The oaths were written in two versions, one in Romance language, popular Latin, the ancestor of French, and the other in Francique, a Germanic dialect. Charles read the oath in Francique, then Louis in Romance, each turning to their respective assemblies and rereading the oaths, this time Charles in Romance, Louis in Francique, and each of the assemblies repeating the oath in their respective languages. One could argue endlessly about the more or less visionary nature of this symbolism. Nevertheless, the symbolism is fascinating, and we shall confine ourselves to noting that the choice of official languages, a concept that did not exist at the time, was not just an administrative or functional choice, but a political choice of great symbolic value.
When Ireland requested in 2005 that Irish (i.e. Irish Gaelic), which was already the language of the treaty for the first extension of the EEC in 1973, be added as an official language of Europe, in Article 1 of Regulation No. 1 of 1958, it was clear that it was above all a symbolic act to support this language, which was symbolically the first official language of Ireland in the Irish constitution, before English.
Clearly, when Ursula Von der Leyen delivers her State of the Union address 80% in English, 10.1% in German and 9.9% in French, while Germany and France represent 18.6% and 15.2% of the population respectively, the symbolic value is beyond doubt and it cannot be argued that the State of the Union address is intended primarily for the international press.
At this point, we can point out that no state in the world, no organisation that claims to be political, has as its official language with precedence over all others a language spoken as a mother tongue by 1.2% of its population.
A Europe afraid of itself
It has to be said that none of the European treaties has a cultural dimension.
This is understandable. If identity is today a fashionable term, synonymous with withdrawal into oneself and an existential refusal of all otherness, a negative of otherness, the notion of culture is bogged down in sociological definitions that irritate the creative character that makes it exist. We choose museum culture over creative culture, and when we talk about creativity, it is often on the basis of a spontaneity devoid of any roots. Yet identity and culture are historical creations, the fruit of individual and collective experience.
So the treaties shy away from the cultural question, perhaps with good reason, so as not to be swept away by resurgent nationalism that could ruin the great enterprise of bringing peace and unity to the western tip of the Eurasian continent.
Let's take a look.
The Treaty of Rome only mentions culture in relation to the economic, social and cultural development of the overseas countries and territories.
The term "culture" appeared for the first time in the Copenhagen Declaration of 13 December 1973 "on the European identity", a circumstantial text isolated in the landscape, which states:
The nine European States, which their past and the selfish defence of misunderstood interests could have driven to division, having overcome their antagonisms, have decided to unite by rising to the level of fundamental European needs, to ensure the survival of a civilisation that is common to them all.
and continues:
Wishing to ensure respect for the legal, political and moral values to which they are committed, anxious to preserve the rich variety of their national cultures, sharing a common conception of life based on the desire to build a society conceived and realised in the service of mankind, they intend to safeguard the principles of representative democracy, the rule of law, social justice - the ultimate aim of economic progress - and respect for human rights, which are fundamental elements of European identity.
The Maastricht Treaty (1992) is less verbose, referring to the "common cultural heritage", the "heritage of European importance" to be safeguarded and "the culture and history of the peoples of Europe", the knowledge and dissemination of which should be improved.
The Charter of Fundamental Rights (18 December 2000) contains a frisson of ambition:
The peoples of Europe, by establishing an ever closer union among themselves, have decided to share a peaceful future based on common values. Conscious of its spiritual and moral heritage, the Union is founded on the indivisible, universal values of human dignity, freedom, equality and solidarity; it is founded on the principle of democracy and the rule of law. It places the individual at the heart of its action by establishing citizenship of the Union and creating an area of freedom, security and justice.
Finally, the Treaty of Lisbon (2010), which recalls "Europe's cultural, religious and humanist heritage, from which have developed the universal values of the inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law", sets out its museographic ambitions in the following terms: the Union "shall respect its rich cultural and linguistic diversity, and shall ensure that Europe's cultural heritage is safeguarded and enhanced".
So between 1973 and 2023, no progress has been made in terms of the emergence of a European cultural consciousness. If anything, it is a regression. Europe is so afraid of itself that it is easy to understand why the President of the Commission does not hesitate to address the citizens of Europe in a language that they learn at school, which is a good thing, provided that it is not the only language taught, and why the Commission boasts an advertising campaign that is intended to mobilise the citizens "You are EU".
An obsolete but self-serving linguistic ideology
We must not overlook the linguistic ideology that has inspired all national governments and European institutions for the last fifty years.
This ideology is based on the idea that "the primary function of the universal human tool that is language is to enable everyone (or at least important people) in every country to communicate about what they know or what they want. Ideally, and increasingly realistically, a single common idiom will suffice (the English of exchanges), so that we can be understood everywhere, be able to draw up and transmit rationally established results, and assert clearly identified and reasonable rights in international negotiations, because they are clearly articulated in a language of universal extension. The word is supposed to say something clear, well-defined in the state of the world, or note a legitimate and negotiable claim. Teaching language at school would mean transmitting this denotative relationship to things, first in the pupils' mother tongue, then, as quickly as possible, in the world language, from primary school onwards or even before.5 This idea, which was fairly widely shared by linguists in the 1960s, is in line with the Cartesian tendency to think that reality can be fundamentally reduced to a few elementary items of data that need to be controlled first, by having a clear and univocal representation, with the complexification of these items of data coming after the fact. In this vision, history matters little, since it is in itself, in its tensions and ambiguities, complex. It disturbs the basic ideas we need to have in order to think clearly and effectively6 .
In the minds of those behind this ideology, who are largely in charge, linguistic and cultural diversity, as enshrined in the Treaties, is not an asset but an obstacle to communication and exchange. The opposite is true, however, because the quality of communication is inversely related to the standardisation and reduction of language.
This conception is strongly inspired by the mathematical theory of communication, in which linguistic exchange is reduced to the exchange of messages between a sender and a receiver. It has no scientific roots and never has.
This language, with no history and no link to any individual or collective experience, has more to do with the novlanguage of H.G. Wells' 1984 than with the popular or literary English of the native English speaker. It is a language of clichés, not nuance. It can be justified as a lingua franca in restricted communities within the framework of well-defined corpora where the code is king. But outside these restricted environments, it ceases to be a language of communication and becomes a language of "incommunication"7 . As Hannah Arendt reminded us in 19648 , there is no substitute for mother tongues.
In other words, the overuse of English in the communications of the European Commission and the European Council (the current President Charles Michel, a French speaker, speaks only in English), is a tool for delegitimising the European project in the eyes of a large proportion of European citizens.
There is clearly a strategy on the part of certain countries and within the Commission itself, led by the President, to impose English as the 'common language', if not the 'single language', of the institutions.
There would be nothing wrong if this kind of action had some reason to serve the countries of Europe and the Union that brings them together.
That's the whole point.
Geopolitical interest
Behind this strategy lies geopolitical interest based on ideology.
From a geopolitical point of view, it's hard not to see the choice of English as the "common language" as a hegemonic marker and an expression of allegiance. But there's no shame in that. After all, vassalage is good, as long as interests converge. If they don't, you pay the price sooner or later, and that's what's happening to Europe, which has been kept in a state of self-serving intellectual laziness by internal and external forces for half a century. If Europe had paid more attention to the question of its defence and its culture earlier on, its destiny might have been different from what it is today. In 1973, in the Copenhagen Declaration, the question had already been raised. The terms of the debate have not changed, but the theatre of operations has. It's never too late to realise this.
In the European Charter for Plurilingualism drafted and submitted for petition by the OEP and its partners in 2005, the article "Plurilingualism and European identities" states, among other things, that
Plurilingualism is the means of affirming the durability of national entities in Europe, the privileged place where citizenship is exercised. If the Europe of commerce can accommodate, not without risk, a lingua franca, the Europe of politics and citizenship cannot exist without the reciprocal knowledge and inter-comprehension of the peoples of Europe. This knowledge and understanding can only take root through the languages of culture. There cannot be just one language for Europe. Europe must find its fullness by refusing to think and work through the languages of current or future superpowers, especially when these languages are in the minority in Europe.
The linguistic conclusion is as follows: The language of Europe is multilingualism. There is no alternative.
1 These figures come from the Directorate-General for Translation and are taken from Robert Phillipson's book "The dominance of English, a challenge for Europe", Rootledge, 2003, trans. Ed. MEC, 2019.
2 https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/fr/doc/inspection-report/fr/110044
3 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/FR/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52021IP0345&from=EN
4 Several references are particularly useful for understanding this event, which is inseparable from the Treaty of Verdun signed a year later by the same protagonists: La naissance du français, Bernard Cerquiglini, Que sais-je?, 1991; L'invention de Nithard, Bernard Cerquiglini, Les Editions de Minuit, 2018, L'histoire mondiale de la France, dir. Patrick Boucheron, Seuil, 2017, p. 105-109; Les larmes, Pascal Quignard, Grasset, 2016.
5 Article previously published in Esprit magazine No. 437, September 2017. We republish it with the kind permission of Esprit magazine.
6 In a brilliant study of the early days of the Napoleonic lycée, Gérard Gengembre has shown how a compromise had to be reached between the rationalist philosophy of the ideologists and the Belles- Lettres. Rhetoric, with its ancient texts, had its part to play, but it was considered too dangerous because it was linked to the excesses of the aristocracy and the Revolution. The rhetoric class (the first) had to be topped by philosophy, which brought students back to reason and its orders. History was at best reserved for higher education, once the elites had been sorted out (and directed more towards the more technical grandes écoles): "L'esthétique des idéologues et le statut de la littérature", in Michel Espagne and Michaël Werner (eds.), Philologiques I. Contribution à l'histoire des disciplines littéraires. Contribution à l'histoire des disciplines littéraires en France et en Allemagne, Paris, Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, 1990, pp. 89-104.
7 On this subject, see "Une théorie politique de la communication", Dominique Wolton, https://hermes.hypotheses.org/4932 and on the linguistic level Antoine Culioli and around Antoine Culioli.
8 La langue maternelle, Eterotopia, Paris, 2015.