France has agreed to a European Union demand to end the practice of labelling French food products in French only, Les Echos reports. The French government is now drafting an order requiring food companies to attach labels in at least one foreign language, in addition to French, to products destined for sale on the domestic market.
Last weekend, the European Commission announced that France has two months in which to abolish monolingual labels on food products to be sold within its borders. This demand is based on a ruling handed down in September 2000 by the European Court of Justice.
The French secretary of state for commerce and small business, Renaud Dutreil, has also stressed that the new legislation upholds the Toubon law on the defence of the French language. Similarly, the French food industry association (ANIA) points out that the European ruling applies only to the description of the product in question. Its ingredients, on the other hand, must continue to appear in the language of the country of origin.