The judgment of the Court of Toulouse concerns the municipalities of Banys i Palaldá, Elna, Sant Andreu de Sureda and Tarerac, among others. The case comes from 2022, in April of that year the City of Elna decided to modify the municipal regulations to allow the use of Catalan, always with the need to translate it later to French. Three other municipalities adhered to the decision.

However, the prefect of the Eastern Pyrenees, Rodrigue Furcy, appealed for the changes and the courts gave him the right. The Administrative Tribunal of Montpelier suspended the modification of the municipal rules and the judge recalled that “the French language of the Republic is a French language” and that the obligation to translate the French language made it worse.

The municipalities appealed that resolution and now the Court of Appeal of Tolosa has ratified with similar arguments the prohibition of Catalan. He pointed out that, according to Article 2 of the French Constitution, the French language is French and that it follows that the first language of the municipalities is French.

According to the Court, Article 75.1 of the Constitution considers that regional languages are also “the heritage of France”, but the use of French is compulsory for legal persons under public law and therefore “administrative documents should be drawn up in French”. In any case, the court has also opened the possibility of returning to Catalan after speaking in French with the defendant. We have received the news of this article from Vilaweb.