After being appointed as new Prime Minister of the French Republic, Catalonia-born Manuel Valls has decided to keep Marylise Lebranchu as minister for  Decentralization and State Reform. But Lebranchu, who hails from a town in northern Brittany, has not been particularly favorable to autonomy proposals​​. While it is true that in 2012 she said she would favour some kind of "recognition" for the Northern Basque Country, shortly later she clarified that under no circumstances would it be possible to create a Basque administrative body in France. Last year, in response to a formal request by the Assembly of Corsica, Lebranchu denied that it was possible to grant Corsican official status. She also recalled that under French law it was impossible to create resident status for Corsicans.

From a positive stance...

As reported by Ouest-France in January, and still being Interior Minister, Manuel Valls said that France "should not be afraid of minority languages ​". "The ratification of the [European] Charter [for Regional or Minority Languages ​​of the Council of Europe] is a commitment of President François Hollande". The very same month, the French Parliament had started a long proceeding to change the French Constitution in order to include a reference to the Charter in it. It is yet to be known if a parliamentary majority will exist. In any case, Valls said that there was a need to "find a majority" so that the constitutional recognition could be done.

Valls also was in favour of giving "more power to the regions. The idea of further regionalization is not incompatible with meeting citizens' demands [...]. I say yes to regionalization, reinforced with experimentation powers. Brittany is a pioneer in that", Valls said.

...to a hostile one

But these words contrast with stances taken by Valls last year after the Corsican Assembly had asked for co-official status for Corsican.As Lebranchu did, Valls also rejected considering any official status for Corsican. Valls specified that he was in line with former French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, who had accepted a place for Corsican while at the same time keeping French as the Republic's sole official language: "It is inconceivable that a second official language could exist in an part of the territory", Valls argued.

Corsican on-line news site Rinnovu Info reacted to those words by recalling that Manuel Valls "speaks Catalan, but does not realize that his father's language would have been threatened by Spanish had it not been granted official status? [It is] the very same official status that he refuses for the Corsican language".

In a similar vein, Corsican MEP François Alfonsi denied that co-official status for languages should be "inconceivable", especially considering that France is surrounded by countries that "are the exact opposite" of Valls' "short-sighted statement". Alfonsi quoted the cases of the Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia, Wales, South Tyrol and Aosta Valley, Luxembourg and Switzerland, among others.

(Image: Manuel Valls / picture by Jackolan1.)