As both a francophone and francophile, I’m hardly surprised at this trial balloon. I think it’s easier for someone from a larger EU nation to take this point of view, though, than for, say, somebody from Sweden or Greece.

I’ve heard it said, and the idea makes sense to me, that Europeans are more likely to accept English as a lingua franca of business and trade than they are French or German because they aren’t anxious to give big European powers a language advantage.

After all, few people are likely to learn Swedish or Greek (or other “small" languages) because the speaker bases aren’t big enough to justify the effort.

But French and German have enough native speakers in Europe that either could conceivably become a lingua franca. It seems that speakers of smaller languages are more comfortable with the idea of learning a common world-wide third tongue than advantaging French or German speakers over themselves.

This of course overlooks that English has native speakers in Europe too, as in Ireland, but the principle remains. So I think it unlikely this trial balloon will fly very high.