As long as the French believe in centralization and the necessity of French language primacy, they will inevitably come into conflict with the ideals of the EU.

I don’t think it is an accident that France (and Andorra) are the only EU countries that haven’t ratified the charter on Regional or Minority Languages. The suppression of other languages and political centralization are seen as integral parts of the French state, and this will inevitably conflict with EU ideals.

Like all revolutionary states it is not long before there is a huge disconnect between the ideals they were founded upon and the present reality. Everywhere from the soviet union, to china, to France and America, that goes down the revolutionary path seems to suffer from this disconnect. And these revolutionary states are always imbued with a sense of national mission that leads them to all sorts of misguided foreign adventures and in general attempts to impose their will on the world.

Speaking as a confirmed UKian eurosceptic, it seems like a splendid idea to distance ourselves from all constitutions (european and otherwise) or indeed any embodiments of any ideals at a state level. These kind of values should be left to the individual! The first language of the republic is french, indeed. I suspect this is partly why the UK and France very often have fallings out as well - UKian pragmatism and french idealism don’t mix.

France will feel threatened by Europe unless it can either get rid of its top-down cultural mentality, where citizens confirm to the state’s ideals, or else shape Europe to be a larger expression of France itself. The latter would be a disaster for Europe at large. Hopefully UK foreign policy will continue to focus on broadening the EU, and we can continue to be enthusiastic sponsors of states such as Turkey, and therefore make it less likely that France can impose its revolutionary ideals on Europe at large, and thwart any deeper integration of the EU to boot.

Since France will begin the process of electing…

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