Despite the continued dominance of English as a working language, demand for French classes is increasing among EU staff and accredited ambassadors and journalists in Brussels, says Thierry Lagnau, director of the ‘Alliance Française Bruxelles-Europe’.

Demand has risen steadily over the past 10 years, with close to 5,000 pupils now registered for French classes at the ‘Alliance Française’ in Brussels, up from less than 2,000 a decade ago, Lagnau told EurActiv.

This is despite the fact that usage of French has declined among EU staff, with most internal documents at the European Commission now drafted in English.

“It is undeniable that ‘globish’ has slowly imposed itself as the everyday language, to the detriment of French”, says Lagnau, who leads the Brussels chapter of the ‘Alliance Française’, a public association promoting the French language and culture worldwide.

A return to “more balance” between languages now seems difficult to envisage, Lagnau admits with a sense of pragmatism.

With 27 member countries and 23 official languages in the European Union, French has largely lost its initial supremacy to the benefit of English, which has become the de facto working language in the EU institutions.

Dennis Abbott, spokesperson for EU Education Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou, in charge of multilingualism, confirms that “English is by far the most used language” in the EU executive.

The statistics speak for themselves. In 2011, English was the source language for 77.04% of all texts submitted to the European Commission’s in-house translation services, up from 74.6% in 2009, Abbott said. By comparison, the position of French has continued to erode, representing only 7.13% of source texts, down from 8.32% in 2009. German, meanwhile, is confined to a marginal role, representing only 2.74% of source texts, despite being the single most spoken language in the EU, with almost a 100 million native speakers.  More.

See: Euractiv