The European Union has dealt France, which is notoriously protective of its mother tongue, a bitter blow by ordering its border guards to learn English.
France has long bridled against the rise of English as the EU’s lingua franca and its usurpation of French as the international language of diplomacy.
The country of Moliere is a member of the EU’s passport-free Schengen Zone and as such it must submit to periodical assessment of its border controls, which are evaluated in confidential reports.
While such reports are secret, their contents can often be gleaned from the conclusions agreed in the regular meetings of EU justice and home affairs ministers. On Tuesday, one such meeting was held in...