On Wednesday, the French upper house voted against modifying the French constitution to include a reference to marginalized languages. Although almost all National Assembly deputies supported the motion to include the phrase "regional languages are part of [French] heritage" in Article 1 of the Constitution, a majority of senators (216 to 103) managed to put a halt to the amendment.

Shortly before the vote in the Senate, the French Academy, a public institution dedicated to promoting the French language, strongly criticized the amendment approved by the Assembly, claiming a reference to languages other than French would "negate the Republic", contradict the principle of "all being equal in the eyes of the Law" and constitute an "attack on national identity".

Broadly speaking, the only senators to back the amendment were the Socialists and the Greens. Members of other parties voted against, except for a small number of members of the Union for a Popular Movement, the party currently in office and the party that proposed the amendment on 22 May in the first place.

The response on the ground
The French Academy's statements and the vote in the Senate have triggered several reactions, particularly from institutions with links to France's marginalized languages. One of the first to express dissatisfaction was Euskaltzaindia (Academy of Basque Language) which said it was disappointed to hear that its French counterpart "scorns" the Basque language. Meanwhile, in Catalonia, the Institut d'Estudis Catalans (Institute of Catalan Studies) called for the statements made by the French Academy to be retracted.

Marc Le Fur, Assembly Vice-President, Breton and tireless defender of marginalized languages, said that the result of Wednesday's vote was an "anachronistic" step backwards and encouraged "defenders of languages" across the French state to communicate their "disappointment" to senators.

Troubled times for Basque in Iparralde
As the French Academy panics at the Assembly's tiny proposal and an editor of Le Mondewrites that "Une langue vivante n'a pas besoin d'être constitutionnalisée pour exister" (a living language does not need to be constitutionalized to exist), a socio-linguistic study carried out by the Government of Euskadi has registered a dramatic 30% fall in the number of Basque-speakers in Iparralde, the Basque Country under French administration.

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