Global Policy Forum

By Ian Black

Enlarging the EU is good news for the English language, confirming its victory over French as the classic medium of European integration. Adding to the woes of the French, who fear an Anglo-Saxon plot to get the top jobs in Brussels and liberalise protected markets, a new survey shows that the language of Shakespeare is more popular than that of Molií¨re in the candidate countries for union membership.

According to the European commission's polling arm, Eurobarometer, 86% of people in the 13 countries applying to join regard English as one of the two most useful languages to speak. German is favoured by 58% per cent, largely in central and eastern Europe, and French by a paltry 17%.

Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia, Cyprus and Malta are expected to join the EU in an unprecedented "big bang" in the next two to three years. Bulgaria and Romania, whose economies are less developed, are likely to take longer. Turkey, the only one of the 13 not to have begun the complex accession negotiations, may never make it.

"After years of armchair speculation about what the linguistic map of Europe will look like after enlargement, this survey is the answer," commission official said. "It spells the end of a rearguard action to preserve French as the dominant working language."

English is the most-spoken foreign language in the candidate countries, scoring 16% compared with 14% for Russian, 10% for German and 4% for French.

The linguistic preferences reflect the fact that historically France has played little part in the outer countries of Europe compared with its role in the original six members of the EU's earlier manifestation, European Economic Community.

Romania has most citizens who speak French as a second language, though there too, English is considered far more useful. Cyprus and Malta, both former British colonies, are special cases, where 57% and 84% respectively speak English as a second language.

Every new EU member's language is officially recognised, so within a few years there will be 10 more to add to the existing 11, with a question mark over whether Turkish will be required for Cyprus.

French dominated the European project from the 1950s until the 1980s but was set back when Finland, Austria and Sweden joined in 1995, and has suffered further from English's dominance on the internet. Today, two-thirds of commission documents are written in English.

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