The use of Euro-English and Globish, a simplified version of English used by non-native speakers, may have become widespread in the EU, but France has never given up hope of Brussels bureaucrats speaking French.
On the contrary, Paris is now attacking the bloc for hiring some new employees based on assessments conducted in English.
Brussels is currently hiring new officials in fields such as space, defense and economics, using a selection process involving some tests that are only given in English. Paris contends that those criteria favor anglophone candidates over their rivals, and has filed two complaints before the EU’s top court; one of them was made public on Monday.
For France, English-only tests amount to discrimination and violate the EU treaties. The bloc’s rules generally provide that all EU citizens should be treated equally, regardless of nationality. Rules on recruiting EU officials also ban language-based discrimination in general, and accept it only under certain conditions.
“It discriminates against non-anglophone candidates,” a French diplomat said on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak on the matter publicly. They added this was not just a French fight, as other member states shared the same concern.
Another EU diplomat who was not authorized to speak publicly confirmed that Italy supported the French position and stressed that “this is not a position against a specific language but in favor of multilingualism.”
France’s push against the ubiquity of English echoes a domestic debate over the country’s loss of influence in the world. French President Emmanuel Macron has been working to boost the use of French worldwide, and on Monday reiterated the importance of la francophonie during a speech as he inaugurated the Cité international de la langue française, a new cultural center devoted to French in the castle of Villers-Cotterêts.
The Commission was not immediately available for comment.
The European Personnel Selection Office, which handles pre-hiring exams set by EU institutions, regularly publishes decisions (known as “competition notices”) that specify the criteria for each selection procedure. France targeted two notices published in 2022 and 2023 that involved some exams given only in English.
The General Court of the EU, which adjudicates disputes involving EU institutions, is expected to rule on the issue within a year; it has previously annulled EPSO competitions for unduly restricting the choice of languages. Earlier this year, the Court of Justice of the EU, which is the final court of appeal for cases involving EU institutions, ruled in favor of Italy and Spain in similar cases.
Francophonie’s struggle
Paris has lobbied extensively in favor of keeping French as a lingua franca within the EU; when it held the Council presidency in 2022, for example, it decided that all preparatory meetings and notes would be in French.
French is an official EU language (one of 24) and is informally considered one of the Commission’s three working languages (the others being English and German), as well as one of the Council’s two spoken languages.
While from a legal point of view, all of the bloc 24 languages are equal, in practice entrance exams are often available in French and German as well as in English.
With 3,271 of its nationals working at the Commission in 2023, France is the third most represented country in the bloc’s institutions after Italy and Belgium.
However, French nationals are underrepresented among the EU’s higher-ranking staff compared to Commission targets to ensure geographical balance among the bloc’s employees.
Gregorio Sorgi contributed reporting.
