International comparisons of Civil Services usually overlook the difficulties due to differing definitions of the civil service in national legal systems. Comparative statistics are therefore extremely misleading, as they are at best based on formal-legal criteria instead of being based on...

The paper, which will be published as a chapter in Bruno de Witte and Miriam Aziz (eds.),Linguistic Diversity and European Law, analyses present day French legislation and jurisprudence applicable to the use of language. It therefore starts by reconstructing the origins of the powerful myth,...