LANGUAGE POLICY OF LEADING EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES AND PROSPECTS OF ITS DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

The unity of Europe is an important political and economic achievement, which made all the European languages, except English, lose their communicative value and national positions. External language policy regulation in the European union is connected with two human necessities – the necessity to express your national identity and the necessity of mutual understanding. The authors of the article consider external and internal factors affecting the formation of language policy in the current frameworks of the EU. Having studied the recent political situation inside and outside the EU and their impact on language policy, the authors highlight the causes of low efficient EU language policy at the present. Despite the fact that the European strategy of multilinguism, which defines linguistic and cultural diversity as an inalienable part of the European identity, one can observe the trend that fear of diversity appears to be far more common than fear of uniformity. Moreover, in the light of immigrants’ flow the policy of multilinguism has become a stumbling block for the governments of many EU states. In spite of the fact that there are a lot of EU programmes aimed at helping immigrants get assimilated in the EU society, the immigrants hardly get assimilated in the European community, thus, they break common European traditions. And it has become the reason why the French government has to reshape its immigration policy.