The Académie Francaise – traditional custodians of the French language – has called on the prime minister to suspend the country's biometric identity card for its "excessive" use of English translations, which it claims are unconstitutional, reports RFI.
The move comes amid rightwing accusations the government is "erasing" French identity.
The biometric ID card, introduced in August 2021, contains a microchip and a QR code. But what's really got the venerable academy’s back up is that every category has been translated in English, so it's awash with words like “name”, “given name”, “date of birth”, “nationality”, “place of birth” "date of issue" and so on.
“It’s an absurdity”, the body says, denouncing a violation of the 1994 "Toubon law", which made French the language of administrative documents, along with Article 2 of the Constitution, which stipulates that “French is the language of the republic.”
For the first time in its 400-year history, the academcy has asked the prime minister to intervene, also threatening to take the matter to France’s Council of State, which deals with constitutional matters.