France’s new bilingual ID cards were introduced in response to 2019 European Union legislation that stipulates that these should display the word “identity card” in an EU country’s national language “and the words ‘Identity card’ in at least one other official language of the institutions of the Union”.
Nothing stipulates that all the other fields should be in anything but the national language.
However, French authorities chose to include translations of all of these.
The Académie slammed the changes as an “over-zealous” interpretation of EU rules.
“On the pretext that the EU stipulates a title in two languages, they are casting into question a crucial principle: French is the language of the Republic,” Ms Carrère d’Encausse, a former MEP, told Le Figaro.
She said the Académie had fired a first shot across the bows last March when it got wind of the impending English invasion, to no avail, so was now taking the unprecedented step of going down the legal route.
“The Académie long reacted with declarations and statements, which were heeded. Today, all words carry the same weight. Another form of action was required,” she said.
‘Bottom up’
The offices of the French prime minister and interior minister said they had received the letter but declined to comment further.
The French are notoriously touchy about losing linguistic clout on the world stage.
In October, a group of 40 French MPs tabled a resolution to instate French as the sole working language of the European Union instead of English because of Brexit.
French was once the dominant language in the corridors of power in Brussels but English is now effectively the lingua franca despite the fact that it is the maternal language of only one per cent of the EU since Britain’s exit from the bloc.
President Emmanuel Macron, a fluent English speaker, regularly invokes the wrath of language purists by peppering his discourse with Anglicisms such as “bottom up”.
However, he has expressed his intention to ensure that French is used more widely in Brussels during France’s term holding the six-month presidency of the EU, which started this month.
