Paris Plays for Brexit’s Refugees

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 5/02/2019 12:00:00 PM
Paris' main financial district is La Defense. Nowadays, they aren't defending themselves from English speakers, apparently.
 When it comes to bourgeois world leaders, they don't come much posher than French President Emmanuel Macron. A former investment banker, there were fears before he ran for the highest office in the land that he'd be an easy target for being out of touch with the common man. And so it has proven: for months and months, he's had to endure endless protests from the "yellow vest" movement.

Interestingly enough, though, Macron is still intent on luring more of those like him from London to Paris in the run-up to the UK's impending exit from the European Union. Those investment bankers need to go...somewhere else. But how about those who aren't masters of the (financial) universe, those unwashed masses filled with Gallic pride? Well, they could offer services for the plethora of ex-London investment bankers Macron envisions will decamp to Paris:
On floors 24 to 27 of the Europlaza tower in La Defense, on the outskirts of Paris, workers hammer away as they prepare the offices of the European Banking Authority, unperturbed by the twists and turns of the seemingly never-ending Brexit negotiations.

The regulator in charge of setting standards for European lenders and conducting bank stress tests will be fully operational from Paris with a 200-strong staff on June 3, ending its eight-year existence in London regardless of when exactly the U.K. leaves the European Union.

“We will continue operating as we did from London,” Executive Director Adam Farkas said in an interview. “Staff members enjoyed the offerings of London. I’m pretty sure they’ll find a way to enjoy Paris soon.”

Winning the bid to host the body was a coup for the French capital after it competed with Frankfurt, Dublin, Madrid and Amsterdam to be known as the EU’s financial epicenter. Now, the butchers, hairdressers and schools of Paris, like its government, are going all out to ensure Brexit-driven movers are made to feel at home, bringing imperceptible changes to life in a city that hasn’t always been seen as welcoming.
How serious are they? the culturally and linguistically more insular Parisian merchants are--good heavens--learning how to speak that accursed English:
Unlike the Germans and the Dutch, for example, the French have been reluctant speakers of English in spite of the country’s ranking among the world’s top tourist destinations. That’s changing.

Laurent Dumont and his wife Nathalie, who run their family butcher’s shop, Boucherie des Arênes, on rue Monge in the fancy 5th arrondissement of Paris, roll their tongues around unfamiliar-sounding English words these days to describe their offerings of Porc Noir de Bigorre or Boeuf de race Parthenaise.

“We have an increasing number of English-speaking clients,” said Nathalie. “They don’t even try to speak French; they launch straight away into English and we’ve had to adapt. There are two of us speaking English in the butcher shop, which is obviously a good thing.” She’s now working on boosting her employees’ English skills.

Florence Charlet, a 46-year-old hairdresser at Thomas C Coiffure in Paris’s fashionable 8th arrondissement, has a similar tale to tell. “We’re having to speak English more and more,” she said. “The last hairdresser I hired had to speak English—it’s a required skill.”
It reminds me of that time my mum visited a Lancel boutique with me in 1994. Back then, having English and Mandarin speakers was a novelty, but there were already a few of them even back then. Now, you see an encroachment into other aspects of French (or more accurately Parisian) commercial life not necessarily geared towards tourists but French-challenged residents.

Times have changed when the French finally relent on speaking English as a commercial necessity, but apparently you don't even need Macron to convince more than a few.

Make no mistake: the British are coming to Paris.