It was perhaps just une tempête dans un verre d’eau, or a storm in a teacup. When reports emerged that British officials would be forced to negotiate the UK’s divorce with the EU in French, Downing Street was quick to dismiss the idea.

The British government insisted on Friday it would not accept negotiations in French. “We will conduct the negotiations in the way that is going to make sure we get the right deal for the United Kingdom,” Theresa May told journalists after the EU summit.

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The prime minister said her time sitting around the table over the past two days had shown her the need to continue to cooperate fully while the UK remained a member.

“I have played my full part, and other member states want the United Kingdom to play a full part as long as we are members of the EU.”

May was responding to a report by Reuters that said Michel Barnier, the former French foreign minister running the talks for the European commission, would prefer to use his native tongue in meetings and documents.

Barnier speaks fluent English and had many encounters with bankers and regulators in the City of London during a previous job as EU financial services commissioner. Speaking after May’s intervention, he insisted no decisions had been taken on the language for Brexit talks.



A commission spokesperson repeated his comments but appeared to leave the door open to negotiations in French. “[The language] will be agreed upon at the beginning of the negotiations – after receiving the article 50 notification – and in common agreement with the negotiators,” the spokesperson said, declining to respond to further questions.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, appeared bemused when asked about the use of French as the language of Brexit: “If I am correctly informed, we are all entitled to speak in our native tongue.”

Some EU officials were amused that French could be the language of Britain’s EU divorce. One official joked that insisting on French would cause problems: “It would not be possible for me.”



Speculation that English would be abandoned by Brussels emerged on the day after the referendum when the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, who is fluent in English, conducted his Brexit press conference in French. Although his officials said Juncker would no longer speak English in public, the Luxembourger has used English in set-piece speeches, most notably, his annual state of the union address.



English surpassed French as the dominant language in Brussels, thanks to Scandinavian and central and eastern European countries joining the bloc over the past two decades. The EU has 23 official language, including Irish Gaelic, although most day-to-day business is in English or French. Sporadic attempts to boost the status of German have never taken off.



Most EU officials think that any attempt to abandon English is doomed, as many European officials use it as their second language of choice. Anglicisms have also sprouted in French bureaucratic texts, including le briefing, le benchmarking, le sixpack [rules on financial stability] and most obviously le Brexit, recently confirmed as a masculine word in French and German.