France has opened a new front in its struggle to halt the adoption of English as standard in the institutions of the European Union, reports The Times.
President Macron’s government has filed two claims with the European Court of Justice, accusing the commission of discrimination against non-English speakers in its recruitment of staff for posts ranging from space and defence to economics and personnel management.
The European Personnel Selection Office, which runs recruitment examinations for the 14,000-strong EU bureaucracy, breached EU law by obliging candidates to take tests only in English in two hiring sessions in 2022 and 2023, France claims.
Formally, all 24 EU languages are equal but English, French and German have long been the working languages.
While President Macron has broken French tradition and upset many of his citizens by freely speaking English at home and abroad, he has thrown his weight behind a drive to keep French alive in the EU machine in Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg, the union’s main bases. “English is not destined to be the only foreign language Europeans speak,” Macron said soon after his 2017 election.
Only French was allowed in events run by France during its 2022 turn in the six-month rotating presidency of the EU.