A Lingua Franca in the post-Brexit EU

Victor Ginsburgh and Juan Moreno-Ternero

No 19.10, Working Papers from Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics

Abstract: Confidence in the institutions of the EU was obviously shocked by the intention of Great Britain to Brexit. We suggest introducing a lingua franca in the EU which could partly repair this irritation, as surveys show that citizens would be very favourable to such an idea. We also advocate that the EU should help member countries by contributing to the cost of such an endeavour. Each country would have the right to claim a compensation based on the number of young citizens who do not (yet) speak the chosen common language. The EU budget would then be distributed fairly, in proportion to the claims. We assume that the choice should be made among three languages: English (yes, even if Brexit takes place), German and French, and analyze the pros and cons of each of them. We finally look at what the existing voting procedures used by EU bodies would lead to. The result of such a vote is far from being obvious, and maybe the vote should be left to countries, with the exception of those whose native languages are English, German and French.

Keywords: European Union; lingua franca; resource allocation; sacrifices; Brexit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 D72 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2019-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Working Paper: A Lingua Franca in the Post-Brexit EU (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pab:wpaper:19.10

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