This house would estabish English as an official language in all EU member states - opening speeches

First proposing speech

Let’s make it short: we would establish English as an official language in all European member states. And we would do so because this is not simply a good idea but also a good answer. This is the best way to address the problems (at least some of) that the EU is facing! Actually the economic crisis tends to both reveals and hides other European prickly issues. It underlines the lack of solidarity between the different nations and the slowness of the reactions (not on all the reactions, we agree on that) but these questions were put aside in favour of the debt, deficit and austerity ones. It is high time we face these questions that are fundamental for the long-term surviving of the European Union. [Continues below the fold.]

by MF

First opposing speech

Ladies and Gentlemen, the question raised by this debate is simple, and yet very important and far-reaching: what do we want our European Union to become?  Are we, Europeans, ready to transfer step by step our citizenship from our country to our continent? I think not. Making English the official language in all EU member states would not only be a very heavy offense made to the member states’ sovereignty, it would lead very rapidly to the implosion of  an Union betraying its nature as set originally by the member states. [Continues below the fold.]

by HA

First proposing speech

Let’s make it short: we would establish English as an official language in all European member states. And we would do so because this is not simply a good idea but also a good answer. This is the best way to address the problems (at least some of) that the EU is facing! Actually the economic crisis tends to both reveals and hides other European prickly issues. It underlines the lack of solidarity between the different nations and the slowness of the reactions (not on all the reactions, we agree on that) but these questions were put aside in favour of the debt, deficit and austerity ones. It is high time we face these questions that are fundamental for the long-term surviving of the European Union.

Speaking of economic issues and austerity, translations, simultaneous in the Parliament or deferred for the numerous texts, are very expensive. Can we really afford it? Do we really want to spend that much when it would be so easy to do else way? It’s is clear that having a common and unique language that would be used by every institutions, European, national and local would be a major cost cut! It would also be a serious advantage in business and education. On these two points, it would be such a win of time: no need to decipher contracts, possibility to arrive in any European country and really benefit from a semester of education with the Erasmus or Leonardo programs. We can add to this that it would significantly reduce the use of paper and therefore help to control the forest management.

The main issue is to bind the European people together, for us to think and to consider ourselves as European citizens. Europe is not only about business. It has always concerned the people. It started to avoid more wars and facilitate trades, and then continued with the Schengen zone and the Erasmus and Leonardo programs and the common money, the euro, as well as the elections of European deputies. To build a common culture does not imply a negation of the national cultures. As it has been recalled in the introduction speech the European motto is to be “united in the diversity”. We have the diversity, we should create the unity and adopting a common language would really help to do so.  Thanks to such an action there would be less division and more comprehension. In time of crisis people would be more likely to think together, simply because they can understand each other and can hear the other’s points of view. English would help us to feel European and to share an experience and a culture.

The next question is “why choosing English rather than any other language”, isn’t it? Well, considering that nearly no one speaks Esperanto despite the 150 years of its existence whereas English is very largely spread should help to answer it. Let’s be honest, all the European children learn English because it’s functional, not that difficult and compulsory. There is no sound in English that is not reproducible by any other language native speaker and all the future adulthood of the Europe is learning it. It’s not a question of giving more power to the UK or even the US, Europe and the US are not the center of the Earth anymore, the development of others countries makes humoristic the accusation of “Americanization”  that some opponents may be tempt to pronounce. Esperanto was a beautiful idea, just as Europe. But as the second one was already hard to start and as we are sharing the knowledge of an other language, the first should keep being an idea for us to focus on more important issues, let’s say economic issues for example.

Establishing English as an official language in all European member states would be at the same time efficient, economical, eco-friendly and socially beneficent so why would we oppose it? I can’t wait for the opposition team’s answer!

Thanks for reading and vote for us!

MF

First opposing speech

Ladies and Gentlemen, the question raised by this debate is simple, and yet very important and far-reaching: what do we want our European Union to become?  Are we, Europeans, ready to transfer step by step our citizenship from our country to our continent? I think not. Making English the official language in all EU member states would not only be a very heavy offense made to the member states’ sovereignty, it would lead very rapidly to the implosion of  an Union betraying its nature as set originally by the member states.

Yes, there is a need for greater efficiency in the Brussels Administration. Yes, the cost of translation in the 23 official languages is huge, and it slows down decision-making. I hear the argument “how can the Union be workable with such a constraint?” Well, apparently it is, because it has been functioning that way from the very beginning. Other than the EU, some actual states actually work with several official languages, without one undermining the others. Take the example of Switzerland: it is hailed as “the best place to be born” in a recent study, and has four official languages. That doesn’t keep it from being modern and flexible as a state. That doesn’t keep the EU from being workable either. It that were the case, Greece, Spain and Italy would have gone bankrupt, and all Euro-Zone countries along with them. It didn’t happen. After two difficult years of constant danger, the Head of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi has recently declared that the Euro Zone was out of danger. I find that quite efficient, saving seventeen Euro-Zone countries, and more, from bankruptcy, and I’m sure you do too.

But then, we might not be talking of the same efficiency, the Proposing Side and I, because we have different conceptions about what the European Union is. There is a way to settle this argument: go check to treaties that established the EU. The 1957 treaty of Rome says that the European Economic Community should remain “determined to lay the foundations of an ever-closer union among the peoples of Europe,” (Treaty of Rome, introduction). They mention the “peoples” and not the people. Europeans are not one, but many. There is not a “European people”; there are “European peoples”: the British, the Poles, the Greeks…and 27 of them. Each has its own distinct history, including that of war with other member states, its own culture, and its own form of government, and that is actually guaranteed by the Maastricht Treaty, in article 128: “The Community shall contribute to the flowering of the cultures of the Member States, while respecting their national and regional diversity and at the same time bringing the common cultural heritage to the fore.” Imposing a foreign language as official language would go against these treaties, and therefore be illegal. 

Treaties can be changed, of course. We are free to design a new EU 2.0. Yes and no. The problem there is: who is “we”. If it is the citizens of Europe, then yes. If it is technocrats in Brussels who want their lives to be made easier, then no, definitely no. Europe must remain a democracy where it is the people that rules. The French and the Dutch have voted against the EU constitution, and euro-skeptic Parties have scored very high in recent election all over Europe. The “Outraged/Indignados/Indignés” Movement has taken to the street massively in Greece, Spain and Britain, protesting against the misfits of globalization. Imagine what would happen if the Proposers had their way: massive demonstrations, general outrage, members slamming the door… No, I am not exaggerating: if such a law is implemented, it would transform the lives of the citizens very radically. Imagine: suddenly you have to fill forms in a foreign language, go to court in a foreign language, get married in a foreign language, study in a foreign language… and all of that in your own country. A new form of occupation and oppression, no less harmful than the ones Europeans have known in the past: language is power, as George Orwell showed in his stunning 1984, all the way back in 1948! 

Do you want to take that risk, ladies and gentlemen? Do you want to destroy the European Union we fought so hard to create and keep alive by playing with it like a toy? I don’t. Diversity, and linguistic diversity, is one of Europe’s greatest assets, let us not do away with it! Thank you for your attention, and vote for us!

 

HA