A Lingua Franca in the post-Brexit EU

  1. Ginsburgh, Victor 1
  2. Moreno-Ternero, Juan D. 2
  1. 1 ECARES, Université Libre de Bruxelles CORE, Université Catholique de Louvain
  2. 2 Universidad Pablo de Olavide
    info

    Universidad Pablo de Olavide

    Sevilla, España

    ROR https://ror.org/02z749649

Journal:
Cuadernos económicos de ICE

ISSN: 0210-2633

Year of publication: 2019

Issue Title: Economía de la Cultura

Issue: 98

Pages: 9-23

Type: Article

DOI: 10.32796/CICE.2019.98.6944 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openOpen access editor

More publications in: Cuadernos económicos de ICE

Abstract

Confidence in the institutions of the EU was obviously shocked by the intention of Great Britain to Brexit. We suggest introducing a lingua franca in the EU which could partly repair this irritation, as surveys show that citizens would be very favourable to such an idea. We also advocate that the EU should help member countries by contributing to the cost of such an endeavour. Each country would have the right to claim a compensation based on the number of young citizens who do not (yet) speak the chosen common language. The EU budget would then be distributed fairly, in proportion to the claims. We assume that the choice should be made among three languages: English (yes, even if Brexit takes place), German and French, and analyse the pros and cons of each of them. We finally look at what the existing voting procedures used by EU bodies would lead to. The result of such a vote is far from being obvious, and maybe the vote should be left to countries, with the exception of those whose native languages are English, German and French.

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