BENELUX CHARTER
The historian and professor at the Open University of Heerlen, in Dutch Limburg, Martijn van der Burg is categorical: it is “a linguistic catastrophe, discreet but worrying”, that threatens the Netherlands. And the teaching of the French language is especially in danger, he says, in this country where only an elite, usually quite elderly, still regularly uses Voltaire’s language.
Large universities such as Leiden, Amsterdam, Nijmegen and Groningen are finding it difficult to maintain a French studies programme, even if that means now including it in “European languages and cultures” programmes. In Utrecht, the academic authorities even announced, at the end of October, their intention to progressively eliminate their program. The French taal in culture. – “French language and culture” – from 2026.
Platform Frans, a network that brings together more than a thousand Dutch experts in the field of French language and culture, published on 1Ahem November, a call for the preservation of French learning at all levels of education. Seven personalities from the largest establishments in the country advocate for the maintenance of the courses“a neighboring language spoken throughout the world” and maintaining close ties with “a French-speaking society that is literally ours”. Without forgetting, they insist, that “French students develop a broader vision of the world than those who only speak Dutch and English”.
Billion euro savings plan
At this stage, the appeal to the dean of Utrecht University to preserve the program Frans taal in culture However, his idea of creation has little chance of being heard: the entire Dutch academic world is in shock after the announcement of a government plan aimed at saving one billion euros in the field of teaching, research and innovation. A demonstration planned in Utrecht for Thursday, November 14, was supposed to bring together thousands of participants but was canceled at the last minute, for fear of new excesses after the violent incidents that occurred in Amsterdam a week earlier, after the match between Ajax Amsterdam. and the Israeli team Maccabi Tel-Aviv.
Given what Marileen Dogterom, president of the Royal Academy of Sciences, calls “the perfect storm” Triggered by the austerity plan of the right-wing and far-right government, universities are forced to prepare plans for layoffs and elimination of courses. And languages are even more present because a project also aims to “Dutchize” certain training courses that are currently taught in English. With a double objective: to return, as populist groups demand, a greater place to the national language but also to limit the influx of foreign students, whose number has continued to grow between 2015 and 2023. During the last academic year, on the other hand, the The number of foreign students decreased, from 18,600 to 17,400.
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