France

By virtue of Article 2 of the Constitution, “the language of the Republic is French.” Following on from this constitutional principle, the law of 4 August 1994 concerning the use of the French language creates a “right to French” which applies to a number of different areas.

Information relating to goods and services supplied to consumers (user manuals, user notices, invoices, guarantees etc) and advertising for such products must be in French.

A number of different documents which are essential to the integration of the employee into the company (contracts of employment, internal regulations, maintenance documents etc) must be written in French.

According to the terms of the law of 4 May 2004 concerning lifelong professional training and social dialogue, mastery of the French language is recognised as a professional competence, training for which can be provided as part of Continuous Personal Development.

Lessons and exams are carried out in French.

Any participant in a scientific debate which takes place in France has the right to express themselves in French and to be provided with the programme in French.

Failure to observe the provisions relating to consumption, work and science carries penal sanctions. These range from simple warnings to fines of up to 750 euros. The judge may apply the cumulative principle and pronounce as many fines as there are occasions of infraction.

All audiovisual services which broadcast in France are required to respect the French language and contribute to the development of the French-speaking world. Nonetheless, the Constitutional Council, in its decision of 29 July 1994, decided that the legislator, in view of the fundamental freedom of thought and expression proclaimed by Article 11 of the Declaration of Rights of the Man and Citizen, does not have the right to impose the use of an official terminology on radio and television broadcasters, whether they are public or private.

All public servants must use French in their professional activities both in France and, as far as is possible, abroad. They are required to use terms and expressions approved by the General Terminology Commission and published in the Official Journal. Nonetheless, no penal or administrative sanction applies to workers who do not obey these rules.

French legislation also aims to promote plurilingualism.

The law of 1994 provides that where an administration translates information intended for the public (notice, road sign, Internet site), it must do so into at least two foreign languages. The law also makes an understanding of two languages other than French an educational objective.

A legal proposal, which aimed to complete the 1994 law and bring additional guarantees to its application, was unanimously adopted on 10 November 2005 by the Senate. It concerns most notably signs in public places, notices on international transport and company names. One provision of the proposed text extends to certain consumer protection organisations the ability to exercise civil party rights already devolved to French language protection organisations.

This proposal was set before the National Assembly on 4 July 2007 but has not yet come up for discussion.

The legal obligation to use French in information relating to goods, products and services sold in France (Article 2 of the law of 4 August 1994) is criticised by the European Commission.

On the basis of the jurisprudence of the European Communities’ Court of Justice, the Commission believes that this obligation, by its general nature, goes beyond the proportionality which national legislation is required to respect between the free circulation of goods within the Union and consumer protection.

An instruction, published by the Bulletin officiel de la concurrence, de la consommation et de la répression des fraudes (Official Bulletin of Competition, Consumption and Fraud Prevention), was therefore addressed to the control services to ensure that the principle of proportionality is respected.

The General Delegation for the French Language and Languages of France, a voluntary cross-ministry service shared by the Ministries of Culture and Communication, coordinates the application of French linguistic law. The relevant State services and public or private bodies have responsibility for controlling the application of legal texts. Thus, it is the services of the Ministry of Economy and Finance (Consumer, Competition and Fraud Prevention Service, Customs and Indirect Rights Service) which have responsibility for ensuring that information in French is available to consumers. The services of the Work Ministry control the application of provisions relating to employee protection.

The Audiovisual Higher Council, an independent administrative body, has responsibility for protecting and illustrating the French language in audiovisual communication. As such, they ensure that the mission statements and descriptions of national radio and television companies and the decisions of private broadcasters (private digital channels, cable and satellite channels, private radio stations) regarding authorisation respect their obligations towards the French language.

The Advertisement Verification Bureau, a self-disciplining interprofessional body, must obligatorily check all televised advertisements before they are broadcast.

The different provisions contained in the law of 26 November 2003 on controlling immigration, the residence of foreign nationals in France and the conferral of nationality, and in the law of 18 January 2005 on the programme for social cohesion, were revised and modified by the law of 24 July 2006 on immigration and integration. This integration policy is aimed particularly at reinforcing the path of integration towards French citizenship, by making mastery of the French language both the basis and the driving force of the integration process.

The reception and training of adults

The ‘contrat d’accueil et d’intégration (CAI)’ (Contract for Receiving and Training), which was implemented on an experimental basis on 1 July 2003, had been rolled out to the whole of France by mid-2006. New arrivals wishing to spend any considerable amount of time in France have been obliged to sign the contract since 1 January 2007. French language training is offered to migrants with whom communication is considered to be impossible or difficult in order to enable them to attain a minimum level of French. This level has been fixed at the Intermediate Level A1.1 of the Common European Reference Framework for Languages and its attainment is measured by a national certification, the DILF or Diplôme initial de langue française (First Diploma in the French Language).

Since 2004, a national linguistic training programme has been in place for those who seek French citizenship but are not judged to have a sufficiently good mastery of French.

The programme is run by two main service providers, ANAEM (Agence nationale de l’acceuil des étrangers et des migrations or National Agency for the Reception of Foreign Nationals and Migrations) and ACSÉ (Agence nationale pour la cohesion sociale et l’égalité des chances or National Agency for Social Cohesion and Equal Opportunities) on behalf of the Population and Migrations Department of the Ministry of Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Co-development.

A planned law on controlling immigration, integration and asylum, currently being considered by the Assemblies, aims to ensure that any foreign national over the age of 16 who wishes to move their family to France should have their level of understanding of the French language evaluated in their home country. If the evaluation is not satisfactory, the authorities would then organise up to two months of French language training for the foreign national in their home country. Proof that the training had been completed would be required before the recipient could enter France.

The specific process for receiving and preparing for schooling non-French-speaking pupils who have recently arrived in France (ENAFs or Élèves non-francophones nouvellement arrivés en France) is now contained in a legal framework as defined in Articles 27 and 31 of the law of 23 April 2005 and integrated into the Education Code, Articles L.321-4 (paragraph 3) and L.332-4 (paragraph 2).

The process is organised according to the provisions made in the circulars of March and April 2002. The end result is to create the optimum conditions for the fastest possible integration into ordinary classes for immigrant and non-French-speaking children and adolescents, by simultaneously giving them intensive training in the French language and immersing them in French ‘school life’. Different provisions apply to children of different ages, depending on their numbers and the way they are spread out over any given area.

Anxious to ensure a balanced linguistic policy, France signed the European Charter on Regional and Minority Languages on 7 May 1999. On the request of the President of the Republic, the Constitutional Council examined the concrete commitments required of France and decided that there was no conflict with the French Constitution. However, it did consider that certain clauses of the Charter went against the principles of indivisibility of the Republic, equality before the law and the uniqueness of the French people in their tendency to confer specific rights on linguistic groups within areas where their languages are spoken. These clauses also contravened Article 2 of the Constitution because they created a right to use languages other than French in public life, such as in the areas of justice, administrative authorities and public services.

In general, in France, institutions and bodies promoting regional or minority languages feel that they suffer from the lack of any legal statute. Nonetheless, the teaching of regional and minority languages is available to families in the same way as the more commonly used modern foreign languages. The situation in which they find themselves was created by the decision of the Council of State on 29 November 2002 to annul two texts relating to the implementation of bilingual teaching by immersion in schools, colleges and ‘regional language’ colleges. The Council of State felt that the prescriptions contained in these texts went above and beyond the necessary requirements for learning a regional language and thus were not eligible to override the obligation for French to be used as the language of teaching. The decree of 12 May 2003 bore this decision in mind when it ruled that no more time could be devoted to teaching in the regional language than was devoted to teaching in French and that no discipline could be exclusively taught in a regional language.

Finally, the law on directions and planning for the future of the school system of 23 April 2005 made the teaching of regional languages the subject of conventions to be signed between the State and local authorities.

In such a context, it is necessary to make the teaching of regional languages in France as dynamic as possible. As a result, during the academic year 2005-6, more than 400,000 primary and secondary school students were taught a regional language.

Usually, pupils study two modern foreign languages. The first language is begun during the final four years of primary school. At secondary school, MFL1 is taught from the sixth class (age 11) to the final year, for three hours per week. From the fourth class (age 13), MFL2 is added and continued until the final year (also three hours per week). The baccalaureate, which heralds the completion of secondary education, includes a compulsory written exam and an oral exam in some cases. Baccalaureate candidates can choose to take their language exam in any of some fifty languages, although in practice most choose English as their first language and Spanish as their second. Some further education establishments have European or Oriental language sections which offer intensive foreign language training and test the language with a special oral exam as part of the baccalaureate. In 2005 (the latest figures available), 181,486 students had enrolled in these European sections.

(2009)