THE European Commission is going to spend millions of euros to prevent English becoming the de facto official language of the European Union, and to shore up the use of French.

The Commission has been pushed into the plan by the French, who are concerned that the language of Molière will become marginalised after the EU’s enlargement to 25 countries in May. Language usage is one of the most politically sensitive issues in the EU, with French national pride bruised by the rise of English.

The Commission is undertaking a huge recruitment drive from the ten countries joining the EU, and has found that 83 per cent of the new staff speak English and just 24 per cent, French.

At present all Commission employees must speak their mother tongue plus one other EU language, which is generally English. The Commission has agreed that all new employees must learn a third language, usually French, before they can be promoted.

The Commission will pay for the training for the third language, which will be required of about 5,000 staff by 2008. This is in addition to an existing French government scheme that is paying for civil servants in Eastern Europe to learn French.

A Commission official said: “The French pushed for it because they thought it was a way of not being marginalised.”

A French government spokesman said: “We have to defend the French language. We are very vigilant to maintain the current linguistic standard in the EU. The EU has been built on the French language for 50 years and it is important that we keep that asset. We want to ensure that the EU has a bilingual system.”

The new staff regulations are set to be approved by national governments before coming into force in May when the new member states join. It will increase the amount that the Commission spends on language training to nearly €5 million (£3.5 million) a year. Christopher Heaton-Harris, a Conservative MEP, said: “We’re talking millions and millions of pounds here for a bizarre element of national pride. It’s a mad idea and a huge waste of money. Why are the French so concerned about their language when they have already given up their currency?”

The regulations were also criticised by employee representatives. “We don’t like the firm link between learning a third language and getting promotion,” Alan Hick, president of the Union Syndicale, the main staff union, said.

On Tuesday the French National Assembly issued a resolution on preserving the use of French in EU institutions, welcoming the new regulations and urging the French Government to make sure that they are enforced.

The National Assembly also said that it should be obligatory for all schoolchildren in the EU to learn two foreign languages. It called for a limit on the number of EU meetings without official interpretation to stop everyone using English; declared that advertising EU jobs only in English was discriminatory; and denounced the European Central Bank for having a predominantly English website.

But France faces an uphill struggle to preserve its language. In the past decade English has become far more dominant in EU institutions, particularly after Finland, Sweden and Austria joined in 1993. One EU official said: “It’s a complete change, a massive shift.”

English is the most popular second language in most of the Eastern European countries joining the EU, with French fourth behind Russian and German. After enlargement the number of official languages in the EU will increase from 11 to 20, putting a huge burden on the interpretation and translation service. With 11 languages the number of cross-translations is 110, but with 20 languages it rises to an unmanageable 380.

The translation and interpretation services cost €700 million a year, and their availability will be cut back to prevent the cost exceeding €1 billion a year. Interpretation will be available only at the highest-level meetings.

Ian Andersen, a spokesman for the interpretation service, said: “They have taken on board the real need for interpreters rather than the political need.

“Before, there was a need to defend their languages, but now it is seen as a communication tool.”

In lower-level meetings officials will have to speak whatever language they are comfortable with that everyone understands, which is almost invariably English.

“The more people you have in a meeting, the more it turns into English. It is inevitable,” one senior official said.

“In practice English is becoming more and more the working language, even in the Commission,” Mr Hick said.

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