Most European countries have a similar language board, English is more an exception than anything else.

And there's not much Gaulish influence in French, here is the full (and small) list of words originating from Gaulish: https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Cat%C3%A9gorie:Mots_en_fran%C...

I don't think any of those have so much pomp and circumstance about their functioning and composition, though.

Stop hating on our classy habit vert. French people like having a history, as complex, bloody and sometime shameful it is. We are an old country and we have traditions. The english people have their royal family, the US have their rusty nuclear warheads and we have the institutions de la république.

They all have rusty nukes shhhh.

Good points, monsieur.

Ah, yes, the good old whataboutism.

That’s kind of the nature of conservatism. Some invaders capture the city, force everyone to convert to their religion or be killed, and 500 years later it is our religion, the religion of our ancestors, the one we always had and will never change.

I think the EU will always be a mere bureaucratic administration unless all European citizens speak the same language. I can’t really think of any serious alternative to English, that’s by an order of magnitude the only real common denominator. For that, French, but also Dutch, German, Spanish, etc must all disappear as languages. And we should be ruthless. French only became the language of France because that country got ruthless with regional languages (patois).