The Elysée website of the French president seems to offer a single language choice: French. It may be an excellent reminder of the importance and glories of the French language, but for a president keen on proselytising in Europe it has some drawbacks.
I checked Macron’s Initiative pour l’Europe speech many times for possible translations I could mention to the readers of my blogs, but only found the same English summary of A sovereign, united and democratic Europe with mainly the concrete reform proposals. (In my opinion the strongest part of Macron’s marathon speech was the inspiration he offered Europeans about the Whys? of European sovereignty, unity and democracy. If people understand the strategic choices, the concrete reforms will follow.)
It therefore took a long time, before I found out through a French Embassy web page that probably the same “Service de presse” which kept the Elysée page clean from foreign languages, had provided an English translation of the 26 September 2017 Initiative for Europe speech.
Soon after I stumbled across a German version of Rede von Staatspräsident Macron an der Sorbonne: Initiative für Europa, provided by the French Embassy in Berlin.
To the people still interested in Macron’s full speech text in English or German after more than a month, I say s’il vous plaît.
If president Macron and his press service want to draw their own conclusions, go ahead. (I’ll just add that there is a reason for the European Union having 24 official languages.)
Ralf Grahn
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