It’s the eternal story of the half-full or half-empty bottle. In a decision rendered this Tuesday, May 9, the administrative court of Montpellier canceled the deliberations of five municipalities in the Pyrénées-Orientales (Elne, Tarerach, Amélie-les-Bains, Saint-André and Port-Vendres) which authorized elected officials to s express in Catalan within the municipal council. However, it was specified that their remarks, like their deliberations, had to be followed by their translation into French. A provision deemed insufficient for the magistrates.
Let’s start with the half-empty bottle. Admittedly, last March, already, the administrative court of Bastia had canceled a provision which allowed Corsican elected officials to express themselves in Corsica within the Assembly of Corsica. But these rules of procedure did not provide for a translation into the national language. As one might expect, the magistrates had therefore considered that he did not respect the paragraph inscribed in article 2 of the Constitution: “The language of the Republic is French”.
Their colleagues from Montpellier therefore go even further. For their part, they consider that no elected representative can express himself first in Catalan, then in French, because of the supposed primacy of the French language, of which they claim to find traces in the Fundamental Law and in the ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts – which had replaced Latin by the “maternal language françoys” in the acts of justice [NDLR : la version traditionnelle selon laquelle Villers-Cotterêts aurait imposé le français seul dans les actes de justice est elle aussi contesté par la majorité des spécialistes. Selon eux, l’adjectif “maternel” autorisait aussi les langues dites régionales, à une époque où plus de 80 % des Français ne parlaient pas français, mais breton, provençal ou picard].
An article 2 intended to fight against… English
The problem is that this interpretation is by no means self-evident. “This notion of” priority “does not appear anywhere in the Fundamental Law, recalls the constitutionalist Véronique Bertile, who had advised the municipalities upstream. This provides that French must be present, but not that it be used in 1. These rules of procedure could therefore have been judged to be in conformity with the Constitution. Moreover, when a foreigner is brought before a court, he first speaks in his own language before his remarks are translated and this does not pose any problems. nobody’s problem.”
It should also be remembered that this paragraph of Article 2 was added to the Basic Law in 1992 with a specific purpose: to fight against English, and only against it. Above all, remember that parliamentarians and the government had made it clear: it should never be used against the languages of France. The Keeper of the Seals at the time had assured him: “No attack will be made on the policy and respect for the diversity of our regional cultures which is an essential element of the national heritage.” Before adding: “French is the language of the Republic and not the only language of the Republic.” Difficult to be clearer.
It is however possible to analyze this judgment in a more positive way. “The administrative court of Bastia had purely and simply prohibited the use of Corsican within the territorial assembly. That of Montpellier authorizes Catalan, even if it is second. The fact that regional languages are not completely excluded political forums can be seen as a slight progress”, continues Véronique Bertile. And to recall that the Council of State canceled several deliberations of the assembly of Polynesia because elected officials had resorted to Tahitian during the debates.
A human right ignored by France
It prevents. France once again stands out negatively in this area. “There is really no country that goes that far. None excludes the use of languages other than the national language in certain contexts”, underlines Fernand de Varennes, special rapporteur of the United Nations on the question. of Human and Minority Rights, which recalls this truth often ignored in France: “The prohibition of discrimination based on language is contained in treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which France has adhered.” Clearly, by excluding regional languages from a number of functions, the “homeland of human rights” does not respect one of them. It is therefore likely that some of the municipalities concerned will appeal, claiming to be victims of linguistic discrimination and an attack on freedom of expression. “I can’t see myself starting to read a deliberation in French that everyone will understand and continuing by saying: ‘I’m now going to read it to you in Catalan. You can therefore consult your cell phones since you will not learn anything new”, underlines, with bitter irony, one of the elected officials concerned. To accept this hierarchy would be to accept making Catalan a sub-language which, at best, would serve as decorum.
Let’s end with another truth, well known to linguists: a language does not live on love and fresh water alone. To develop, it must have a significant place in education, administration, business and political life, as is the case in other European democracies. In the United States, documents in Chinese, Vietnamese or Spanish are distributed during elections where there are many speakers of these languages, a condition deemed necessary for the proper exercise of democratic practice. In Trentino-Alto Adige (northern Italy), a citizen can plead in German before the courts. In Greenland, Greenlandic is the official language while Danish is only learned “in depth”. And one could multiply similar examples.
Nothing of the sort in France, as we can see, where we sometimes seem to have gone back to April 2 of the year of grace 1700, the date on which Louis XIV had issued an edict excluding the use of the Catalan language of the public sphere…