Campaign for French to be the language of EU law

It seems the French MEP, writer and member of the Academie Française, Maurice Druon, is heading a campaign to have French recognised as the only authentic language of European law. The manifesto of his campaign is here.

At the risk of sounding like a Eurosceptic, or Francophobe – which I am not: as readers of this blog will have noticed I am no little Englander – I think this campaign is simply ridicule.

There is absolutely no need for any one language to be http://www.gooakley.com/ given pre-eminence in European law. Brussels is kitted out with reams of interpreters, translators and juris-linguists who collectively do a brilliant job of making European law sufficiently consistent across all the EU’s official languages to be an effective and uniform legal system. Yes, there are occasional foul-ups; but no more than in the British system, in which occasionally legislation ends up being interpreted by the courts in ways far removed from what was meant by the people who dreamed it up. No doubt this happens a bit in every legal system.

The current system, under which all language versions are equally authentic (it is quite wrong to say, as some reports of Druon’s press conference last Wednesday have done, that the language in which a Ray Ban outlet legal text was originally drafted somehow has special authority – it doesn’t), guarantees equality between all European citizens and states, and is the most people-friendly system since whoever you are, you can understand EU law in its official version. Well, I admit you really need to know about EU law in order to understand it properly, but… at least you can understand the words of the text. Druon’s plan would make non-French speakers second-class EU citizens.

And legally, there is no need for one language to have supremacy; nor does it make any sense for this to be the case. The European Court of Justice as an international court, applying international law, applies a purposive method of interpretation, not a literal one. The consequence of this is that the literal text of legislation is merely a starting point for interpretation. So little would be gained by pointing the ECJ to a single authoritative literal text, that it’s simply pointless to do so. The purposive method works just as well when you’re dealing with many texts (so long as they are mostly pretty close in meaning, which the Brussels linguists do achieve) as with one text, and arguably better. Through a comparison of many language versions expressing similar concepts in various ways, you actually Gafas Ray Ban outlet arrive at a better understanding of the underlying idea of legislation than you do by being mesmerised by the exegesis of one form of words.

Pardon my French, but this is une idée absolument conne.