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What will be the linguistic implications of the Brexit ?

The Brexit will take place because, as the British Prime Minister explained, whether one approves of it or not, it was a political choice of the British people which must be completely accepted.
It is quite obvious that the Brexit will have no consequences on the situation of the English language in the world. English is the second language spoken after Chinese and is the most taught in the world, far more than French and Spanish. There is no reason why the situation should change significantly.
Yet, is it the right question ? Many are those who asked it in these terms, although the question is not the fate of the English language in the world, but the position of English as one of the official languages of the European Union.
An official language is not chosen according to world statistics but according to the population of the country.
Thus, Belgium has three official languages : French, Dutch and German. Switzerland has four official languages : German, French, Italian and Romansch. Sometimes official languages are official only in some places. In Spain, Catalan, Basque and Galician are respectively co-official languages together with Castilian in Catalonia, the Basque country and in Galicia, but they are not official in Andalusia. South Africa has eleven official languages but only two are official at the federal level. Some states do not have any official languages formally, the principal language(s) serving as official language(s).
The internal rules of each country determine the official languages.
At the level of the European Union, rules are determined by regulation 58/1 and specifically by its article 8 according which « Regarding the member states which have several languages, the language in use will be determined, on request of the interested states, according to the general rules ensuing the legislation of this state. »
The rules for Europe are not a sum of the internal rules of each State. Each member State is represented by a single language within the European Union. The use of the singular in article 8 is in no way fortuitous. If the rule was that the official languages of the European Union were chosen at the good will of each of the States or that the official languages were the official languages of the member States, article 8 would have been formulated differently. Therefore each State chooses one official language, not two or more. This is why Ireland opted for Gaelic and Malta for Maltese. There is no formal act by which one of those two member States would have opted for English.
With each new State joining the European Union, the list of official languages was completed on the basis of article 8 and as the case of the departure of a member State has never occurred up to now, Brexit sets us before a novel situation. The question which must be asked is the updating, automatic or not, of the list of article 1. If the updating is not automatic, it must be done through a unanimous vote of the European Council. Let’s imagine that Malta decides to depart from the European Union, would a unanimous vote of the Council be necessary to cross out Maltese from the list of official languages ? And perhaps would a unanimous vote be necessary to know if this question is decided on unanimously or if the principle of automaticity is maintained : an official language cannot survive as such on the departure of a member State ?
Choosing the official languages is an eminently political choice whether it be on the national, federal level or the level of an international organization or more, an organization sui generis like the European Union, confederal in some aspects, federal in other aspects. If rules of law have been set, it is not for reasons due to some immanent justice, but for reasons which are themselves fundamentally political.
One can hardly imagine that English may remain an official language of the European Union after the departure of the member State which is formally the only speaker of this language as an official language.
The argument according to which English is the language of the United States of America and one of the first languages spoken in the world is even less admissible.
As for the idea that English, due to the departure of the United Kingdom, might become a « neutral » language which could all the more become the only official language of Europe, this would amount to sending Europe in the spheres of absolute non-existence. There is no doubt that this might do nicely for some foreign powers for which the aspiration of Europe for independence represents some inconvenience. With regard to the European peoples for whom the only thing that counts is to recognize themselves in the European Union besides their own nations, that would be, on the other hand, the uncalled for snub and, let us be clear, the death sentence of the European idea. The fundamental linguistic law of the founding fathers of Europe was plurilingualism, it must remain so.
The only way for English to remain an official language is that Ireland or Malta respectively gives up Gaelic or Maltese and opts for English, according to their internal constitutional rules.
What would the consequences be if English stopped being an official language of the European Union ?
Brexit in itself will result in a reduction of the number of British civil servants, but this won’t happen overnight considering that the civil servants of the European Union, whether they are British or not, are first and foremost European civil servants and do not represent their country. Anyway, there will no longer be any British commissioners and they will no longer acceed to posts with responsibilities.
And above all, whether English remains an official language or not, non official rules, in other words bad habits such as the writing of more than 90% of the bills in English, the invitations to tenders, the calls for projects, the public consultations often led in English, which are discriminating practices, will have to cease to the advantage of reasoned plurilingualism.
Linguistic accessibility which is the counterpart of the principle of openness is a fundamental principle which should be officially acknowledged for all that concerns communication with the citizens. It is useless to talk of « the citizens’Europe » if this principle is not respected.
Of course, if English is no longer an official language, it does not mean that it will no longer be used, as a certain number of fields will go on resorting to English, but its predominance will no longer be overwhelming as it is today.
The negotiation of the Brexit cannot be carried in English, for Europe is not negotiating with a member State but with a country which from the state of member will become a partner. The context is one of negotiation and not a meeting internal to the European Union. Negotiating in the language of the departing country would be completely incongruous and a sign of weakness. Common civility demands that the languages of each of the negotiators be used.
Together with this rebalancing which would be after all like going back to the beginnings of Europe, the countries will have to re-launch educative linguistic policies of diversification, not in order to exclude English but in order to restore European languages to the places they once had. Only then the cultural and linguistic diversity of the member states will be a liberated richness, not a stifled reality. Let’s hope that this political willingness exists !