It is a new stone in the garden of tumultuous relations between the government and Corsica. The administrative court of Bastia has just canceled a deliberation of the Assembly of Corsica consecrating the use of the Corsican language within the hemicycle of the island. In a judgment rendered on March 9 and The world was able to consult, the administrative judge relied on article 2 of the Constitution of October 4, 1958 (“The language of the Republic is French”), to reject the deliberation of December 16, 2021 of the island authority.
In its rules of procedure, the latter engraved in stone that “the Assembly of Corsica and the executive council are guarantors of the material and moral interests of the Corsican people, (…) the language and the debates of the Assembly of Corsica are Corsican and French”. This provision had not escaped the caudine forks of the legality control. Then engaged in a standoff with the community of Corsica, the former prefect of the island Pascal Lelarge had filed two appeals before the administrative court, which therefore ruled in his favor.
According to the representative of the State, these acts were the administrative Trojan horse consecrating the notion of the Corsican people, censored by the Constitutional Council thirty years ago, during the second so-called “Joxe” process on decentralization. The regional body objected, for its part, that the reference to the Corsican people had already been used in the plan for the development and sustainable development of Corsica, in 1988, without being subject to censorship.
“It’s absolutely violent”
By canceling the deliberation taken in 2021, the administrative judge also considers that “the use of French is binding on legal persons governed by public law and persons governed by private law in the exercise of a public service mission”. But he does not seek the cancellation of the acts adopted since by the island community, which would cause a monster administrative imbroglio. The president of the executive council of Corsica, the nationalist Gilles Simeoni, has confirmed his intention to appeal this decision.
“It is regrettable that justice decides that a deliberation which is done in a language other than French is illegalhe told the Monde. It is an absolute violence but also the demonstration by the absurd for the coofficiality between the Corsican and the French: it needs a constitutional revision in this direction. » This must take place in 2024, as announced by the Head of State, but the contours of the inclusion of the status of Corsica in the constitutional bloc are still unclear.
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