At the very admission of one of its members, it was one of the “most beautiful debates” that one has never known within the Constitutional Council. A debate that raises questions as fundamental as those of the country’s unity and respect for its internal diversity. A page of history now accessible to the general public: twenty-six years later, in fact, the deliberations which led to the rejection of the European Charter of Regional and Minority Languages have just been put online on the High Jurisdiction website. And what we discover there is particularly revealing.
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Let us recall the context. In 1999, France must say whether or not it intends to apply this text which, as its name suggests, aims to protect cultural diversity in Europe. The government of Lionel Jospin is favorable and the sign. Jacques Chirac, who does not intend to ratify him, seizes the Constitutional Council knowing full well that he is hostile. He will not be disappointed.
Georges Abadie, the rapporteur responsible for instructing the session, sets the entry tone. “Before getting to the heart of the constitutional analysis, I would like to say, as my deep self, how the spirit that presides over this charter strikes me and hurts me in the conception that I have of the Republic and its uniqueness,” he launched in the introduction. Almost all of his colleagues are on the same line, starting with the president of the institution, Yves Guéna, who has this heart cry: “I hate this charter!” The following follows. The text will eventually be rejected, at the end of a session where, very often, the arguments put forward appear in contradiction with the established facts. Here are some illustrations (I indicate in parentheses the name of the adviser author of the quote):
– “The Charter starts from the idea that minority groups […] are oppressed in their culture and in their rights. This oppression, I do not feel it with regard to France “(Georges Abadie).
According to UNESCOall the minority languages of France are threatened with disappearance by the end of the century.
– “Develop the teaching of regional languages when one is unable to teach French correctly [est une] Aberration “(Michel Ameller).
Scientists have long demonstrated The favorable effects of early bilingualism on academic results. Moreover, according to the Ministry of National Education itself, the establishments where the students follow the majority of their courses Breton Or in Basque obtain results in the superior to the average, and this Including in the French tests.
– In 1992, the sentence “The language of the Republic is French” was added to article 2 of the Constitution. “It was a question of avoiding the use of foreign languages, but also of minority languages, as is clearly emerging from the debates” (Pierre Mazeaud).
This statement is inaccurate. The introduction of French in the fundamental law was only the English opponent. Several distrustful parliamentarians had even publicly demanded that said article was never used against regional languages, to which the government had explicitly committed, as evidenced by the report of the debates of the National Assembly published in Official Journal (page 1021): “No damage will be brought to politics and respect for the diversity of our regional cultures which is an essential element of national heritage”, had thus assured the then seals, Michel Vauzelle.
-“This text is harmful to everyone-for citizens but also for politicians themselves” (Simone Veil).
Is it abusive to consider that this is a completely “Parisiano-centered” point of view? It is indeed unlikely that French citizens speaking of the Basque, Occitan, Alsatian or Reunion Creole deem “harmful” the preservation of their historical languages.
We could multiply the examples of this type (I refer the readers interested to The Facebook page of this newsletterwhere I reproduce other quotes), but we will have understood the essential. It would be difficult to assert that the council approached this text with perfect neutrality. A sign: the rapporteur, despite his resolute opposition, had nevertheless reached this conclusion: “The Charter does not have a provision contrary to the Constitution.” He had exposed the reason for it: among the 98 measures proposed, France had only retained 39, mostly already “implemented” or “trivial”, in its own terms. Illustration: one of them planned to “allow or encourage the publication by local communities of their official texts also in regional or minority languages”. No what, he pointed out, weakening the main republican principles.
Well bored, his colleagues therefore had to seek another solution to block the text. They thought they were finding it by affirming that the objective set by the Charter – promoting the use of these languages ”in privacy and public life” – was of “binding” value. An acrobatic interpretation to say the least: and the rapporteur and The professor of constitutional law Guy Carcassonnein a very detailed report, had each demonstrated the opposite. What does it matter. The alleged wise men passed over and have considered that the text threatened both “the indivisibility of the French people”, “national unity” and “the indivisibility of the Republic”.
This is how the charter ended up being declared contrary to the constitution unanimously less a voice, that of Alain Lancelot, former director of Sciences Po. Curiously, even the rapporteur has resolved to rally to the thesis of the majority, after having demonstrated that it was indefensible … which leads the constitutionalist Véronique Bertile, specialist in these questions, to this conclusion: “In the circumstance, the council did not follow a legal reasoning. had an ideological, even dogmatic approach. ” It is an understatement to say that reading these debates seems to prove him right.
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